


Oxygen

by MalMuses



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Artificial Intelligence, Body Horror, Cosmology, Crazy Astrophysics and Horrific Monsters, Engineer Dean Winchester, Event Horizon - Freeform, Eventual Happy Ending, Falling In Love, First Time, Hallucinations, If you could die tomorrow - fall in love, Isolation, M/M, Mechanic Dean Winchester, Medic Castiel (Supernatural), Openly Bisexual Dean Winchester, Panic Attacks, Plot, Plot Twists, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, Supermassive Black Holes, Survival Horror, Suspense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-01-25 17:46:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18579460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalMuses/pseuds/MalMuses
Summary: In the year 2299, on a transport ship in deep space, three million people slept. They waited, frozen inside egg-like pods, waiting for the day they could safely wake up—the day they could go home, when Earth would be safe again.If the systems on the ship were left unchecked—if something went wrong—for forty-eight hours, then two people were selected. Their duty: to assess the ship, find the problem, and fix it.Wannabe-Engineer Dean Winchester and Reluctant-Medic Castiel Novak were taken out of hypersleep.The ship's failing oxygen system meant three million humans were in danger. And that, it turned out, was the least of Dean and Castiel's worries...





	1. Good Morning

**Author's Note:**

> This fic came about because of [this prompt](https://www.facebook.com/groups/1738066693138229/permalink/2081377528807142/), a long work day, and my inability to say no to a sci-fi AU. 
> 
> It is a fully outlined WIP, as always, so you can expect regular updates if you decide to come along with me!
> 
> This fic starts off a little like the movie "Passengers", then takes a wild swing to the left and goes nowhere near it, via a creepy detour through "Event Horizon" and some humorous hints from "Red Dwarf" and some other space comedies.
> 
> I hope you enjoy the results!
> 
> Thanks to [JenSpinner](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenSpinner/pseuds/JenSpinner) for both the prompt and the cover graphic.
> 
> Thanks to [jscribbles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jscribbles/pseuds/jscribbles) and [saltnhalo.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltnhalo/pseuds/saltnhalo/works)
> 
> Here we go, I hope you enjoy!
> 
> \- Mal <3

 

 

 

“ _Bonan matenon, Dean Winchester,"_ a feminine robotic voice blared in Dean’s ears. “ _Bonvenon al la Saranton._ ”

The only words Dean understood from the announcement were his own name and the name of the spaceship he remembered boarding—the Saranton. It meant “Savior”, apparently, in Esperanto. Oh… the robot voice was speaking Esperanto.

Dang it.

But Dean had bigger problems than a disembodied voice speaking a language he didn’t know—he was awake, for one thing.

For another, he couldn’t breathe.

His eyes darted open. Dean flailed, coughing and retching desperately, overcome with panic. He reacted instinctively to the sensation of liquid filling his lungs—by opening his mouth and trying to suck in more air. Something warm, slimy, and thick filled his mouth, only succeeding in choking him further.

He lashed out, his fists and feet beating against the inside of a smooth, solid chamber. Something firm and entirely immobile, like a metal cuff, was holding him in place around his waist.

“ _Drenado komenciĝanta_ ,” the voice droned unhelpfully.

Dean continued thrashing, no longer sure if he was spitting up slime or just emptying the contents of his stomach into the pinkish sludge around him. The confines of his prison— _his egg,_ he was slowly recalling, _his stasis egg_ —were not getting any larger, and he was quickly adding claustrophobia to his list of problems. He wasn’t actually claustrophobic, but it was amazing what new fears bred after waking up in what felt like a gel-filled coffin.

Flailing upwards— _is this upwards? How do I tell?_ —Dean’s fingers finally found a seam in the glassy exterior. He could feel something below his feet gently sucking the fluid from the egg, like a plughole in a bathtub. The swirling slime began to drain out, allowing him a small gap where he could feel something other than slime, and he began running his fingers desperately across the interior of the egg.

From fear and lack of use, his fingers trembled.

_Gotta get out, gotta get out, gotta—_

Air blew across the pads of Dean’s exploring fingers as the seam parted. The egg split, the top part opening like a lid with a _whooshing_ , hydraulic sound. At the same time, the restraint around Dean’s waist released _—_ and when the gunk in the egg cascaded over the edge to the floor, he went with it.

The curved front wall of the egg dug into his waist as he flopped forward, sprawled half inside the egg and half on the floor as gravity suddenly hit him, pulling him viciously downward from where he’d been suspended vertically. His arms slapped across a tiled, sterile floor, and he ended up in a strange handstand formation—which was fine by him, as it aided with the spluttering and retching that pulled the liquid from his lungs. The fluid that had kept him alive for however long—he didn’t know what century it was, nevermind what year—was now drowning him, and his world had narrowed down to just that.

The rest could come later.

He focused on breathing, and that alone took a while.

When the puddle of slime and vomit on the floor in front of him had finally stopped expanding, when he finally pulled an even breath through his nose, Dean slowly began to engage with the rest of his body. He gulped in deep breath after deep breath, ignoring the gunk as it slowly trickled across his skin.

 _Son of a bitch. I feel like shit,_ he registered.

Gingerly, every muscle trembling, he eased one leg over the edge of his egg-like cocoon, his naked body dripping watery pink sludge. His leg couldn’t hold him even for a moment, and he immediately slipped.

_THUD!_

He hit the floor with a sodden, sticky smack, tumbling into the gross puddle he’d created.

_Motherfu—_

_“Kompleta eltiro. Havu bonan tagon_ ,” his invisible, loud, _fucking irritating_ companion chirped.

Finally, more coherent, important fears made themselves known: _Why am I awake? Why is no one else awake?_

Slowly, blinking like some ground-dwelling beast who’d never seen the sun, Dean struggled against the bright lights as he attempted to take in his surroundings.

He was in the Nest, of course. The endless-looking room within the ship where everyone was stored. Three million people. One quarter of the remaining human race.

Dean slithered, on his hands and knees, over to a barrier in front of his egg. He hauled himself up hand-over-hand, bar-by-bar, until he was able to hook his elbows over the railing and peer out across the Nest.

The Saranton was an almost incomprehensibly huge craft—one of four mega-ships that had left Earth in the year 2299. Looking out over the shelves of stasis eggs was like looking out over a city; each glowing pink egg a window in an almost endless series of skyscrapers that stretched up, and down, and beyond. Three million eggs. His eyes could see nothing else.

“ _Bonvolu iri al informareo_ ,” the voice interrupted his awe.

“ _Ne kompreni_ , bitch,” Dean snapped. “Can you speak English, for god’s sake?”

“Yes, Mister Winchester. I can speak whatever you wish.”

“Oh,” he said, blinking. “That easy, huh.”

“All Officers are required to learn Esperanto, Mister Winchester,” she said; if Dean had thought A.I. were capable of such a thing, he’d think she was deliberately sassing him.

“Well, I’m not an Officer, I’m a maintenance technician.”

“Congratulations, Mister Winchester. You have been promoted—dramatically.”

“Now you’re just being rude, computer lady.” Dean pulled up heavily on the railing in front of him, using it to hoist himself up and test his legs.

“I am MEG, the Megaship Engineering Guide for the Saranton. If you had attended your briefings, Officer Winchester, then we would have met.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Dean muttered under his breath. “Alright, so rather than picking on my attendance record, how about you tell me where to find a goddamn towel, lady?”

“A…towel.”

“Yes! Good for wiping stasis-egg slime off your balls, I’ve heard. Every space hitchhiker should have one.”

“So, you _admit_ that you’re a hitchhiker with no business being here?” MEG snarked.

“Aren’t you supposed to be helpful?”

MEG sighed. Dean didn’t even know A.I. _could_ sigh.

“The white door at the end of your floor will lead to a debriefing area, where you will find your precious towels. Also, some clothes to cover all that up.”

Deciding that his knees could just about do the work on their own by then, Dean began to shuffle slowly across the slick tile floor. “Are you supposed to be this sassy? Does Xenon know you’re talking like that?”

Xenon, Dean knew—because he had attended _some_ briefings, thank you very much—was the ship’s Computer Intelligence Hologram, its mainframe, its head A.I. honcho.

There was a pause.

“Xenon is zero-responding,” MEG said, her tone strange.

“What do you mean?” Dean froze, mid-stride back toward the stasis eggs.

“It means she’s offline, Winchester.”

“I know what it _means,_ ” Dean grumbled. “I meant more along the lines of why exactly is she zero-responding?”

“I do not have that information, Winchester.”

Dean rolled his eyes. Of course she didn’t. Just his luck that he’d get saddled with the A.I. with a fried brain.

Rather than head shakily straight across to the white door, Dean made his way over to the egg next to his own, carefully avoiding the vomity-sludge pool on the floor.

There—suspended in his own pink gunk—rested Dean’s brother.

By then, he’d fully remembered filing into the stasis area with Sam and the rest of the guys from their level. They were lucky, right near the door—he’d heard rumours that some of the others had to walk dang-near a mile to their egg. They’d been excited, eager to fall asleep and wake when Earth would be habitable once more, when they’d be back home.

Looking down at Sam’s peaceful, sleeping face, his longish-brown hair floating oddly in the pinkish slime, Dean suddenly had many more questions.

“MEG.”

“Winchester.” She mimicked his tone.

“Why am I awake?”

“You’ve been selected for duty. The ship has malfunctioned, and your stasis egg was the second one to respond. Therefore you are currently the highest-ranking officer aboard this ship.”

“Malfunctioned?!”

Dean felt his earlier panic race back, filling his lungs like the sludge had and making his heart thump. “ _Duty?_ I’ve been selected for… I’m supposed to fix it?!”

“Well, no one else can fix it. You’re the only Engineer I have to work with.”

“Son of a bitch.” Dean slammed his fist down on top of his empty, now closed Egg. He hadn’t seen it close itself; he’d been too busy gazing out at the other millions of eggs, most likely.

“What’s the malfunction?”

“I do not have that information, Winchester.”

“You—” Dean bit down on his lip. What was the good, he figured, of arguing with the engineering A.I....? It was Xenon he needed. Oh, and an engineer that had a real degree, not one forged in the back of his friend Ash’s truck.

Dean dragged his eyes away from Sam, squeezing them shut.

_Holy shit, this is bad._

“Why can’t you wake up someone else? One of the officers, a whole team of engineers, people who—”

“Classified.” The voice was not MEG’s, though it came through her PA system.

Dean stood very still, the air that was—thankfully—filling his lungs suddenly seeming like yet another thing that could choke him.

“MEG?”

“Yes, Winchester?”

“What did you just say?” he asked carefully.

“I said, I do not have that information, Winchester.”

Dean frowned. “No, after that. When I asked why you can’t wake up the Officers—”

“Classified.” This voice was harsher, colder, flatter in a way that made Dean instantly uncomfortable. It was also male.

The ominous voice didn’t say anything else. Dean’s body thrummed with nerves he couldn’t do anything with; what use was panic when he had nowhere to run?

Silence reigned for long minutes. No one turned up to greet him, and neither MEG or the not-MEG overriding her spoke again. Dean stood, slowly absorbing a whole host of information that told him absolutely nothing at all. There was something wrong with the ship. Something was also up with MEG, clearly. He had no idea where to begin fixing any part of the ship beyond his _wish_ to be an engineer—a mechanic was _almost_ an engineer, after all—and he was alone. No, wait—

“MEG, you said mine was the second egg to respond—is there someone else here?”

“Yes, Winchester.”

“And, I don’t suppose you could find it in your little binary-coded heart to tell me  _who?_ ” Dean forced out between gritted teeth, beginning to make his way toward the debriefing door.

“Castiel J. Novak, third degree Medic, Nest Quadrant Ceta-Four-Alpha-Niner. He has already exited debrief.”

Thankfully, Dean made it to the door without slipping in any slime. He pushed it open and stepped into the cool, sterile-smelling air of the room beyond. It was white—everything on the dang ship was white, Dean recalled then. It was all deliberately calming, lit with strip lights low against the floor and high up against the ceilings, all smooth edges and sleek furniture.

It felt odd, after being out in the exposed Nest; the looming sense of skyscrapers and space was gone, and he felt delightfully contained in a sensible, clean, sludge-free room. Well, other than the sludge currently dripping off his body onto the floor.

A quick search of the white, plastic cabinets that lined the walls turned up a pile of simple, plain white bath towels. Dean scrubbed down quickly, leaving a pinkish pile of fabric on the floor near his feet. He grabbed a clean one and tied it roughly around his waist, then took two more from the cabinet and tucked them under his arm—there had to be a shower around here somewhere, he reasoned.

“MEG?” he asked hopefully, unsure if she was connected into the debrief room.

“At your beck and call, like a puppy,” she answered dryly, her voice booming from overhead.

“Awesome. Two questions; where’s the shower, and where’s this Novak dude, if he’s out of debrief?”

“The shower room is out into the corridor, next door to your right. And Mister Novak is on his way, asking very similar questions.”

“Good to know.”

Dean took some deep breaths, trying to tamp down the panic that still swirled in his stomach.

_Shower. De-gunk. Come back. Get clothes. Then find out where the Officer’s eggs are, and wake them up fuckin’ manually if I gotta._

Despite having been told that his fellow conscious-crew member was on his way, Dean still wasn’t quite prepared to step out into the corridor and be slammed into by a slimy, naked man. He bounced off a wall of firm muscle and ricocheted back against the door, flailing, the wind knocked out of him.

“What the _fuck,_ dude!”        

“Sorry, sorry!” the man babbled, grabbing at Dean’s biceps to steady him, inadvertently covering him in more slime.

“I just scraped all that shit off, god damn it—here!” Dean shoved a towel firmly in the slippery guy’s direction.

“Thank you,” he said, blushing profusely.

The man—Castiel J. Novak, Dean assumed—was about Dean’s height, perhaps an inch shorter,with piercing blue eyes and tanned, smooth skin. His hair was too slime-slicked to pick out any particular style, but Dean could tell it was very dark. And fuck, was he beautiful. Not that Dean had time to notice, of course.

“You must be Novak?” Dean asked, carefully re-adjusting his hip-towel from where it had slipped. He kept his eyes firmly on Castiel’s face, refusing to look—or even consider—exactly which body parts the handsome medic was hastily wiping slime off of.

“Cas, please,” he said, giving Dean an uncertain smile as he hurriedly cleaned himself. “And you’re Officer Winchester, yes? I’d salute and stuff, but, uh—” He raised a damp hand half-heartedly toward his slimy hair. “—I’m a little underdressed.”

"Yes, I see that," Dean pointed out, his gaze accidentally flickering down to the trail of dark hair disappearing under the medic's towel.

Castiel eyed him strangely.

 _I see that? What the fuck, Dean,_ he thought to himself. _Way to creep out the only other conscious person in a thousand light year radius._

Dean cleared his throat and offered the second dry towel he held to Castiel. “And also, not exactly.”

“Not exactly?” Castiel questioned, making quick work of tying the towel around his waist before he gave Dean another uncertain smile.

“Well, I wasn’t an Officer until ten minutes ago.”

Castiel’s eyes went wide, only highlighting how blue they were in the white, glowing corridor light. “But you _are_ an engineer, right? You know how to fix this—”

Suddenly, Castiel was grabbing at Dean’s wrist and tugging him, towel and all, up the corridor. Around them, the glowing lights that illuminated the squeaky-clean floor at foot level phased in and out, filling the corridor with a flashing that only helped build Dean’s sense of _trouble._

“Fix what?” Dean panicked. He considered lying, considered telling the guy that he really had graduated top of his aerospace engineering class. But he’d never actually been to college, so that would be a stretch. “I’m not exactly an engineer, no…”

Dean would have been understanding if Castiel seemed annoyed, or angry, or a little upset with him for stowing away on the ship as if he had a right to be there. But the response Castiel gave was, probably, the absolute worst one he could have come out with.

“Oh God, we’re all gonna die.”

“Wanna explain that, buddy?” Dean choked out, his over-moistened mouth all of a sudden dry, pulled along behind this strange, half-naked man as he trudged swiftly down the corridor, moving as fast as their wet feet would safely let them.

Castiel slid to a halt in front of a white, double-doored elevator, slamming his palm against the scanner to summon it to their floor. “The ship is compromised, the oxygen systems are slowly failing, and we’re about six million light-years off course.”

.... _What??_

“But, uh, you’re a medic, right? Smart guy? You can help get this sorted, right?”

Dean realized he sounded a bit desperate, but he was far too worried to give a shit.

“Well, uh, about that…”

That was a bad sign. That was a really bad sign.

  
  
  
  
  



	2. Explanations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! It's been a while to update this one, I know - Sorry about that! I've been up to my neck in editing for four large big-bang fics that are posting in the next three weeks (one of them already posted, so if you like something suspenseful and scary, try out [Giant, Anguish, Danger!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19127209/chapters/45454549) :)
> 
> Chapters will be more regular now, so I hope you enjoy where we go!
> 
> With big thanks to [EllenOfOz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllenOfOz/pseuds/EllenOfOz), who is a wonderful beta and even more wonderful person! :)
> 
> Let me know what you think, guys!
> 
> \- Mal <3

 

The longer that Dean was awake and out of his goopy, gross stasis egg, the more his memory cleared. That was normal, he knew. He remembered his training briefings—the ones he _had_ attended, at least, thank-you-very-much MEG—where he’d been told that although his long-term memory would be fine and he’d have no trouble recalling who he was or memories from before the ship, his more recent recall might be a little fuzzy. Which seemed to be holding up, as when he’d first awoken all he could really recall was boarding the _Saranton_ with his brother Sam.

But by then, stood inside the white, sleek elevator—which was playing frustratingly calm elevator music, totally out of sync with the panicked beat of Dean’s heart against his ribcage—he remembered more. The elevator itself was familiar. Maybe not this one, he reasoned, but plenty of others like it, throughout the ship.

“I remember this,” he announced.

His words broke the tense silence that had fallen between himself and Castiel ever since his towel-clad companion had confessed to “not really” being a medic. “It’s a long story,” he’d said, and Dean hadn’t asked, because really, what right did he have to ask? It wasn’t like his degree was real, either. When they’d made sense of things… then he’d ask.

“Remember what?” Castiel asked, seeming glad that Dean had said something to quell the quiet. “The elevator?”

“Yeah,” Dean said. “I remember maintaining it while we travelled to the edge of the system, before we were put into hypersleep.”

“So you were an engineer!” Castiel sounded so very relieved, Dean couldn’t help but take offense.

He was _just_ as valuable as a real aerospace engineer. Kind of.

“Technician,” Dean replied lowly.

“Oh,” Castiel said, deflating slightly.

“Third class,” Dean added, almost a whisper.

Castiel’s shoulders slumped a little further as the white box they rode slid smoothly on upwards away from the Nest.

“I mean, I’m not stupid or anything,” Dean said defensively. “Just because my records say I’m an engineer but I’m not, it’s not because I—”

“It’s fine,” Castiel said, his voice tight.

“Anyway,” Dean continued, flicking his eyes to the side to look at the handsome, tanned man that was the only other person awake on the entire freakin’ ship. “It’s not like you can talk.”

“That’s different,” Castiel argued. “Not everyone has the same opportunities, the same family—"

Dean had no control over the rude noise that burst out of him. “Don’t get me started about _opportunities,_ buddy, I know you hoity-toity medic types and your—”

“Don’t call me _buddy,_ ” Castiel shouted, interrupting right as the doors slid open in front of them.

They both stood, glaring at each other, breathing heavily.

“You may now exit the elevator,” MEG’s voice announced after a long moment, dripping with sarcasm. “You’d think between an engineer and a medic you could work that out.”

“Shut up, MEG,” they yelled in unison.

They both tried to step out of the double door at the same time, and somehow managed to knock their towel-clad hips and bare shoulders together in the middle, both letting out huffs of annoyance.

“Why are we here?” Dean snapped after they’d exchanged more irritated glares and finally disembarked far enough that the door could close. God, this guy was annoying. How’d he get stuck with such a confrontational, irritating dick as his only company in deep space?

He gazed out across the wide, impressive space of the Saranton’s bridge. It looked a bit strange to Dean’s eyes, so empty, his brain now beginning to provide memories of it bustling with crewmembers, noisy, constantly in motion. Neat, curved desks of smooth, white material sat in rows, all facing toward the huge, floor-to-ceiling window that took up the entire front of the bridge, looking out across the universes.

Space.

Dean would never get used to it, that sight. Before he boarded the _Saranton_ , lying about his past so that he could join the same ship as his brother, rather than be put with the lowly uneducated laborers that filled the fourth and final megaship, the _Sklavo,_ he had never been outside of Kansas for more than a few days. He wasn’t lawyer-material, like Sammy… he was just a mechanic. He’d always been fascinated with engineering, space, making things work with his hands; he’d read every aerospace engineering book the thrift stores of the surrounding towns had been able to provide, in school. But college was never on the cards for him. He had to work, pay the bills, care for Sam.

Being in space for either work or pleasure had never been on his radar until the evacuation.

And there it was, in all its endless, incomprehensible glory. The distant galaxies that glowed amidst the eternal ebony background were beautiful, but Dean couldn’t name them with a naked eye; they were different to those he saw from Earth with the telescope he’d mounted atop Bobby’s old barn, that much he knew. Where were they now?

“Perhaps we should stop staring at the sky and actually talk to MEG,” Castiel suggested with a tight smile.

The comets beyond the window wrote endless poetry across the inky sky, tails of glittering ice that made stories no other eyes would ever see. Dean could appreciate it, the epic beauty of the view he had, and how incredibly lucky he was to behold it. The eternal cosmos did little, however, to stop him wanting bounce Castiel's smug, irritating, annoyingly-beautiful face off the damned window.

“Look here, buddy, I don’t know you and I see no reason why you should get to tell me what to do given that—”

“I said, don’t call me _buddy,_ ” Castiel snapped again, looking more furious than Dean could understand. “We are not friends, Dean.”

Dean held up his hands placatingly, though he couldn’t control the small eyeroll and disbelieving huff that escaped him. “And we sure won’t be, with that attitude. Has it occurred to you, _Castiel,_ that we’re all we’ve got? Us and MEG? She says even Xenon is offline.”

Castiel’s eyes dropped away, moving from Dean. He opened his mouth, and Dean began imagining the fighting retort he was going to get—but nothing came, and Castiel pressed his lips tight and turned away.

Puzzled, Dean cleared his throat. “MEG?”

“Yes, Winchester?”

“Just wondering if you wanna update me on anything, as our fine medic—or not—Castiel here seems to have more of an idea what’s going on than I do, apparently.”

Castiel shot him a poisonous glare, but let MEG respond.

“Well perhaps if you’d been a bit nicer to me—”

“I was perfectly nice!” Dean exclaimed.

“Perhaps I was nicer,” Castiel said nonchalantly.

“MEG, you’re the Engineering guide, if you’re gonna play favorites you should have at least picked the engineer…”

“I thought you weren’t a real engineer,” Castiel pointed out unhelpfully.

“Oh for fuck’s sake.” Dean leaned his palms down onto the desk closest for him, letting his head sag forward between his arms for a moment—at least until his hip-towel slipped and he had to scramble to preserve his modesty.

Castiel coughed politely and pointedly averted his eyes out to space.

“Alright, MEG,” Dean said calmly once he was covered—or as covered as he was going to get, in the circumstances. “I’m sorry if we got off on kinda the wrong foot. How about a do-over?”

The air above their heads, which MEG seemed to speak from the vicinity of in every room, gave a considering sniff.

“Please,” Dean added, trying his best to contain his sigh. “Please, MEG. I’d appreciate it _oh so much_ if you would update me on what is happening with the ship, and why we’re here. We couldn’t possibly do this without you, the loveliest, _smartest_ A.I. on board.”

“Alright,” MEG grumbled. “Don’t ruin it.”

From the corner of his eye, Dean caught Castiel smirking in amusement.

“So, friends?” Dean tried.

“I don’t have friends, Winchester. I’m a computer.”

Dean sighed heavily.

“But I’ll tell you why you’re awake.”

It was a testament to Dean’s day that felt like a victory. “Thank you, MEG,” he said, as sweetly as he could.

“Forty-eight hours ago,” MEG began, “the _Saranton’s_ emergency functions kicked in. The oxygen levels in the lower portions of the ship were dipping below what is acceptable for human habitation. The background processes that keep the ship flying have certain troubleshooting capabilities, and they determined that the problem was Engineering related. So here I am, booted up just for you.”

Dean nodded. “Alright. So why us?”

“Well,” MEG said, sounding shifty and evasive even as she began. “I knew we needed an engineer to fix the issue. Unfortunately, yours was the first stasis egg to respond, Winchester. So we’re making do with what we have. The ship, as-is, is now completely stable. I re-routed the oxygen to focus on the Nest, to keep the rest of the cargo alive—”

“Cargo?” Dean interrupted, unable to help sounding a little offended.

“Fine, fine— _people_ ,” MEG corrected. “The ship’s life support capabilities are currently too poor to support more than two people, and protocol requires that if any human is awake, a medic must be present.”

“But why _him?”_ Dean blurted, too exasperated to play along with MEG any further.

MEG was quiet.

Exchanging a look with Dean, Castiel stepped up to the edge of the desk that Dean was back to leaning on, resting his towel-clad hip on the other side of it. “MEG?” he prompted, his eyes, so very blue in the white-light of the bridge, searched up toward the ceiling. “Why me? I’m not even—”

“Yes.” MEG sounded as annoyed as they did. “Your files indicated that your commission as a medic was purchased, that you didn’t pass the qualification-based entry requirements. But that isn’t the only criteria used to determine who wakes. It’s beyond my control you know, if Xenon were awake—”

“But she isn’t,” Castiel coaxed, sounding for all purposes like he was gently encouraging a nervous child. “So perhaps you could explain, MEG?”

Dean was still busy reeling from the news that Castiel’s place on the ship had been _purchased._ What the fuck? People could do that? What kind of asshole—

“My algorithms calculated that you two are the best match.”

“Best match?” Dean couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. “You sure you haven’t got a decimal point in the wrong place there, girl? Because it’s only been fifteen minutes and we’re driving each other up the wall.”

“Because you’re both being ridiculous, and reacting out of fear,” MEG said dismissively. “It’ll pass.”

Dean and Castiel looked at each other helplessly.

“Best match for what?” Castiel asked after a minute.

When MEG’s answer came, after a long, tense moment, she sounded almost sad. “In case you haven’t noticed, you are the only two people awake, in deep space. Millions of light years of absolutely nothing.”

They waited.

MEG let out an apologetic sigh. “I hate to break it to you both, but my calculations indicate that the two of you have the highest chance of stopping each other from going utterly insane.”

 

x

 

They had to share.

“Oh come on,” Dean called out in irritation. “MEG! You’re kidding right?”

“I doubt it,” came her voice from a speaker on the wall of the simple, overwhelmingly white dorm she’d directed them to. “But by all means, tell me what I’m supposed to be kidding about.”

“We have to share a room? Come on,” Dean said. “That’s not cool.”

Castiel frowned. “I don’t snore, I’m not sure why it is so very offensive that—”

“It’s not _that_ ,” Dean said, trying—and rather failing—to sound apologetic. “We don’t know each other, and we’re both guys. We need our space, okay, MEG?”

“Winchester,” MEG said calmly. “You will be issued one room with two beds, as per protocol. Plus, engage your brain and think about it for just a moment, if it’s not too painful—this way I only have to route oxygen to one dorm, rather than two.”

Dean couldn’t really argue with that, no matter how much he wanted to. He looked over at Castiel, who was still busy looking pissed. “Well, fine. But I get the top bunk at least.”

“Fine,” muttered Castiel, stalking over to the bottom bunk and sitting heavily on the edge of the regulation foam mattress. “I didn’t want it anyway.”

“Who doesn’t want the top bunk?” Dean grumbled under his breath, moving across to give the ladder a firm shake. A stability test, as he viewed it. Either Castiel hadn’t heard Dean’s grumble or he had just decided that ignoring him was the best option… Dean wasn’t complaining either way.

At least they had clothing; MEG had instructed them to head to the dormitory to find uniforms, which he and Castiel had awkwardly changed into, back to back, in silence. The clothes were simple white pants and shirts with collars. Not Dean’s style, but it was better than swinging free around a dude he didn’t know, he reasoned. Why they couldn’t just have single beds like the group dorm Dean vaguely recalled sleeping in on the way out of the solar system, Dean didn’t know. He briefly considered asking MEG… but figured he had a fifty-percent chance she’d just end up telling him to sleep on the floor.

Instead, he gave the ladder another testing-shake, and once convinced that they were built to hold grown men—because he hadn’t slept in a bunk bed since he was ten, so excuse him for being suspicious—he carefully hauled himself up top to check it out. Lying on his back, staring at the white tiles, Dean decided that it was claustrophobic and weird having the ceiling so close to his face… but he’d be damned if he was telling Castiel he wanted to switch. He wasn’t even sure why he’d wanted it, other than something about Castiel made him prickly and combative, so he’d wanted to claim some territory. He didn’t even _like_ heights.

“MEG,” Castiel’s voice drifted up from the lower bunk after a moment. “Do we get our personal effects?”

Dean perked up interestedly, sitting up and barely managing not to hit his head, tall as he was.

“That is protocol, yes,” MEG said from the slightly tinny speaker on the wall. She sounded slightly apologetic, which was more emotion than Dean had suspected the ship A.I.s to be capable of, honestly. “Unfortunately,” she continued, “the storage rooms where your personal belongings are stored are now in the red zone.”

“Red zone?” Castiel asked.

“The levels without oxygen,” MEG clarified. “The _Saranton_ has simple maintenance robots—janitors, practically—who I would ordinarily have sent to do fetch and carry jobs that you could not, but with Xenon offline, they aren’t responding.”

“Of course,” Dean muttered, flopping back onto his side. “Just our fucking luck.”

Dean heard Castiel mumble something below him. He was back up in a shot, his hair skimming the ceiling.

“What was that?”

“I said my luck was just _fine_ until I met you,” Castiel replied sulkily. Dean couldn’t see his face, but picturing his annoyed squint was already pretty easy.

“Oh come on, dude! You can’t blame me for any of this, you’re just being an ass, now—”

“Says the guy who’s done nothing but yell and be obnoxious since we met!”

Dean opened his mouth to bellow straight back—but by some miracle managed to bite his tongue. He balled his fists, and took a long, deep breath. “Look, b—Cas. Cas. We don’t know each other. We’re stressed and scared and getting off on the wrong foot, yeah? So how about we both just try and calm the fuck down, and work out how to make this little bonding exercise as short as possible?”

The bunk bed creaked, and Dean heard Castiel’s feet lower to the floor. He stepped away from the bed, and Dean could see his dark hair come into view for a moment as he lowered himself to one of the two chairs at the small table in the middle of the room. “Alright,” he said slowly, though Dean could hear the effort it took in every word. “Do you have a plan?”

Wriggling around so he was back at the ladder, Dean dangled his feet over the edge of it, looking down at his reluctant roommate. “Kind of,” he admitted.

Castiel didn’t speak—which Dean thought might be a blessing. Instead he just tilted his head to the side, questioning. He looked like a puppy, but Dean refused to think it was adorable.

“Wake up the Officers,” Dean said.

“Wake up the Officers,” Castiel echoed. “That—that’s it? That’s all you have? It’s rather… mediocre, as plans go, isn’t it?”

Dean felt his frustration build again, and it must have shown on his face, as Castiel held up a placating hand.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s better than what I’ve got, which is nothing. Wake the Officers. How? And what then?”

“We’ll have to find out where they are by ourselves—I tried to ask MEG, but she…” Dean’s eyes flicked to the speaker, uncertain.

“MEG?” Castiel called.

“Yes, Mister Novak?”

“Privacy filter on, please.”

There was a beep, and then silence. Dean blinked down at Castiel, before giving him a reluctant grin.

“Cool. Dunno why I didn’t think of that.”

Castiel parted his lips as if he was about to give Dean a list of reasons why he thought Dean hadn’t been the one to think of it, but he wisely shut his mouth, and resumed his questioning head tilt.

“So, I tried to ask MEG about waking up the Officers, before we crashed into each other back at the Nest,” Dean explained. “I didn’t think I’d be able to fix the ship by myself so that seemed to be the obvious next step—but when I asked her, this voice...” Dean trailed off for a moment trying to think how best to explain.

“A voice from a different A.I.?” Castiel interjected helpfully, still looking up at Dean as he perched on the bunk.

“Yes. It happened to you too?”

Castiel nodded solemnly. “I thought I’d offended her or something, it was odd. All I did was ask if the engineer she told me was awake—you—was going to be able to reboot Xenon.”

“Huh,” Dean said, frowning thoughtfully. “Well, no matter what MEG or her unfriendly alter ego says, I think we should try and wake the Officers. Because honestly…” Dean shrugged and gestured between them.

Castiel raised an eyebrow.

Dean rolled his eyes; of course the asshole would make him say it. “You’re an unqualified medic with a purchased seat on this barge, and I’m the guy who used to service the vending machines and clean gum from the elevator doors. We ain’t gonna be able to do shit.”

Castiel wrinkled his nose. “Gum? Why would there be—”

“You’d be surprised,” Dean interrupted. “And that was hardly the worst thing I cleaned up. I, uh…”

Dean paused, reaching to rub the back of his neck self-consciously, before sighing and deciding to continue. He was going to have to come clean at some point, he figured.

“I never actually went to college. I lied, got my friend to forge some stuff for me, so that I could be on the same ship as my little brother… I raised him, y’see… we’re all we got, is each other. I couldn’t…” he trailed off, shrugging. “So, if you wanna judge me for that, whatever. When I took the allocation tests to see where I’d be assigned on the ship, I got pretty much the lowest rank on the ship. Because I never learned any of the stuff those other guys did. I mean… I probably knew some of it. But the test was in Esperanto, and I, uh… well, I don’t speak it.”

Castiel blinked slowly. “You took the assignment test in a language you don’t speak?”

“They’d have known I didn’t go to college and that I lied, if I’d told them I never learned—”

“Dean,” Castiel interrupted incredulously. “I’m pretty sure they knew when you _entirely failed.”_

Dean frowned grumpily down at his feet, dangling from the top bunk. He wanted to yell at Castiel, but hell, there wasn’t much to yell about. Dean wasn’t stupid, but “entirely failed” was pretty much how he felt about his life in general. All he’d managed to do was raise Sammy long enough to get him to college.

And now he had to work out a way to save this ship, because that meant saving Sam. And Sam was everything he had.

Melancholy, Dean kicked idly against the metal ladder that led up to the top bunk.

“My family purchased my commission,” Castiel said suddenly.

When Dean looked up, Castiel was looking down at his hands, studying them intently as he spoke.

“Everyone in my family is a big shot, you see. Doctors. Businessmen. My dad was an author and my mom was a congresswoman. I just…. I was the failure. I spent most of college smoking weed and _not_ making decisions. So, when they all got onto the ship… I didn’t.”

“Right,” Dean said quietly, feeling like a bit of a dick. “So, uh… it wasn’t your choice. You didn’t lie about being a medic.”

Castiel shrugged a shoulder, his eyes still on his hands. “I did take some classes. I just never graduated.”

They were quiet for a moment, the soft hiss of the room’s oxygen filter overhead seeming loud as they avoided looking at each other.

Eventually, after a long few minutes, Castiel gave a low, entirely humorless laugh. “So. Waking the Officers, I agree with. Because otherwise… we are entirely screwed.”

Dean nodded slowly. “But how do we wake them if MEG can’t talk about them without her evil twin coming out to play?”

Castiel looked back up then, some of their tension easing as they focused on a plan. His eyes— _fuck me they’re blue,_ Dean thought involuntarily—came up to rest on Dean.

“Maybe we can just ask her if we can look at the blueprints?”

“Blueprints?”

“For the ship—if we’re supposed to fix the thing, we’d feasibly need to look at those, right? And they’ll probably show wherever in the Nest the Officers are stashed.”

Dean felt the slow smile spread over his face. “You might be onto something there, Novak. Who needs a medic, huh? Not when you’ve got a…” he trailed off, realizing that he had no idea what Castiel did.

“A vegan bartender taking a massage therapist course,” Castiel supplied helpfully.

Dean cringed. “Uh, sure. One of those.”

Castiel gave him a squinty glare—which Dean refused to think was cute, the guy was still an ass—and cleared his throat.

“So,” Castiel said. “We tell MEG that we want the blueprints so that we can start figuring out what is wrong with the ship. Then what—we turn her off again, and go searching for the Officer stasis eggs? If she’s not allowed to tell us where they are…”

Dean nodded and began to half-slide half-climb his way down the ladder to the floor. “Yeah. I guess we’ll just keep an eye out for what seems to trigger her to go all Hulk on us.”

“The Hulk?” Castiel squinted. “I thought he was a good guy, in those old movies? The person overriding MEG doesn’t sound friendly.”

“Not Old Man Logan Hulk,” Dean supplied knowingly.

Castiel stared at him and slowly raised an eyebrow.

“Graphic novels?” Dean said slowly. “ _Archenemy of Wolverine? Leader of the Hulk Gang?_ ”

Castiel shook his head. “I’m not very well versed in some aspects of pop culture, I’m afraid.”

“Oh,” Dean said, grinning as his feet hit the floor. “Well, I love the old classics. He’s the main villain of that ‘verse, an irredeemably evil version of—”

“Dean?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t care. Turn MEG back on.” Castiel said, smiling in a sugary sweet way that immediately irritated Dean some more.

“Fine, uncultured swine,” Dean mumbled. “MEG, privacy off.”

Immediately the speaker up on the dormitory wall crackled.

“On, off, on, off,” MEG grumbled. “Like a battery powered sex aid.”

Dean and Castiel rolled their eyes to the ceiling in unison.

“Dean and I had a little chat,” Castiel began calmly. “And we’ve decided that our time is better spent focusing on getting the ship functional than at sniping at each other.”

Dean gave Castiel a smug little smile, both of them knowing that part at least was true. “Yeah,” he picked up. “So the first thing to do is familiarize ourselves with the ship and see where the red zones are.”

MEG gave an overly dramatic, sarcastic gasp. “Oh, how lovely. You’re actually going to try and do your jobs, and not doom three million humans.”

Dean grit his teeth, breathing calmly as best he could through them. “Yes, MEG. So, would you please, pretty please, be able to assist us, and make the blueprints of the ship available to us?”

Castiel tensed beside Dean, and they exchanged a nervous look while MEG paused, both fearing that the voice which returned would not be hers.

“Sure, boys,” she chirped. “Whatever gets you lot out of here and me back to my smutty novel faster. Report to the bridge, I’ll start loading the images to the holo-table.”

Shoulders slumping with relief, Dean and Castiel exchanged a silent, sneaky high-five.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There we go! An update!
> 
> So, guys... do you think Dean and Cas's simple, straightforward plan to wake the Officers is going to work out how they hoped...?
> 
> And do you think the ship is as stable as MEG claims?
> 
> Let me know your thoughts!
> 
> \- Mal <3


	3. Who Wears Sunglasses Inside

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back, I'm back!
> 
> I'm all done with my bigger-fic posting for Bangs, at least until next month. Which means more regular WIP updates, woo! I have lots written, but getting everything edited and then beta'd is the slow part for me, mostly. I love the regular weekly rhythm of posting WIPs though, so I'm sure you'll be fed up of me again soon ;)
> 
> For now, lets get back to Dean and Castiel and their space disaster, woo!
> 
> Thanks go to the phenomenal [jscribbles](.) for being an awesome beta and friend, as always.
> 
> Please do leave me a comment and let me know what you think! We're setting up some plot this week, but as I hope you can tell...we're leading into some fun for our boys, too ;)
> 
> \- Mal <3

 

While Dean would try never to _show_ exactly how fascinated he was by holo-technology—he didn’t want to come across as _that_ kind of nerd, after all, the kind who knew things and tried hard—he would admit to himself, secretly, that it was pretty cool to use.

It hadn’t taken them long to get up to the bridge. Castiel had insisted on pausing to raid the lockers in the dormitory, to see if there was anything there he could smoke, much to Dean’s eye-rolling amusement—but he found only a Swiss army knife and three very old candy bars before Dean dragged him out of the room and on their way. As soon as they’d arrived at the bridge, MEG had directed them to the captain’s area, where the table was.

But that was as far as they’d managed to get.

Dean and Castiel stood shoulder-to-shoulder at one corner of the huge holo-table that took up a sizeable amount of space behind the empty white curve of the Captain’s desk. Dean stood on the long side, and Castiel stood on the short side, their elbows meeting at the corner. They both squinted firmly at the shimmering blue-white lines before them. The lines formed a detailed, scaled blueprint of each and every floor of the _Saranton_ , an immense amount of densely coded information that they had absolutely no way of using unless they could work out how to operate the holo-table.

The projection of the ship just hung there, mocking them. Occasionally Castiel would wave a hand at it, or more often through it, and point out that this was supposed to be “Dean’s kind of thing”.

It was all very well, Dean seethed silently to himself, to say that this was “his kind of thing” but it was a little different to actually stand in front of a piece of technology like this. Different from reading about them and their workings in an out-of-date textbook when he’d take a break from replacing brake pads on decrepit Buicks at his Uncle Bobby’s auto shop. For one thing, this was 3D, and the diagrams Dean had devoured in fascination had been decidedly _flat_.

Frustrated, Dean stuck his hands forward deep into the projection of the ship, and then drew his hands apart, stretching the image out, trying to blow it up in size but instead succeeding in nothing more than making it ping around the table like a rubber ball before it settled back to center.

“I think you’ve got to be more _gentle_ with it,” Castiel said, sounding as frustrated as Dean felt.

“I’ve tried!” Dean snapped, glaring across at him. He half-wished Castiel _had_ found something to smoke in the lockers, maybe he’d be less of an ass.

Castiel gave him a level, unimpressed look.

“Fine,” Dean said. “You try.”

“This isn’t really my kind of—”

“I _know_ , okay,” Dean said between his gritted teeth. “But for the love of God could you please just try!”

Rolling his eyes in a motion that was fast becoming quite familiar to Dean, one that involved Castiel’s jaw, shoulders, and entire spine, Castiel reached his hands forward and plunged them into the blue-ish lines of the 3D blueprint before them.

Again, it pinged around but refused to zoom.

“MEG,” Castiel called out, throwing his arms up in the air. “Can you explain to us how to get this working?”

“I provided you with the manual,” MEG drawled lazily, referring to the hefty, sixteen-hundred-page book that rested accusingly on the other end of the table. “I don’t have hands, in case you haven’t noticed. Unless you want to go through the effort of booting me into _my_ hologramatic form, just so you can use a table.”

Dean turned, spreading his arms wide, unable to rein in his agitation as he yelled up at the vague space overhead where MEG’s voice emanated from. “MEG! I honestly don’t know if you’re programmed to be deliberately unhelpful, or if your circuits are just fried, but—”

“I GOT IT!” Castiel suddenly bellowed from behind him.

Dean spun to see Castiel gently zooming in on the Nest within the ship image, holding his wrists at right-angles and using his palms to carefully coax the image outward, like an overly-cautious mime.

“You got it!” Dean echoed, delighted, though secretly grumpy that the ‘medic’ managed it quicker than the ‘engineer’. “Alright, let’s see what we’ve got going on here…”

Dean leaned forward, shoulder-to-shoulder with Castiel again, and they both squinted carefully at the image in silence. They both knew what they were looking for, though neither of them would say it aloud; MEG had provided the blueprints so that they could begin assessing the damage to the ships air systems (and they could see the red glowing sections where oxygen didn’t reach easily enough) but they didn’t want to alert her—or her grumpy evil twin—to what they were really searching for.

A tense minute passed before Dean spotted an area of the Nest that looked different. The Nest contained three million small individual stasis pods, and their egg-like shapes showed up even on the holo-table. The area required to house them all was massive and took up the entire back half of the mega-ship. The _Saranton_ was as big as several cities, but even so, the amount of space the Nest took up was mind-boggling. At the very top, incredibly easy to miss, there was a small break in the pattern of eggs.

Dean nudged Castiel’s shoulder carefully and pointed.

Castiel did his mime act again, gently easing his hands apart over the spot Dean had indicted, zooming them in toward the irregular section with a soft _swoosh_ -ing sound.

There, between the unassuming shapes of two stasis eggs on the very top floor of the Nest, was a door. It appeared to lead to a separate area, the details blacked out even on the blueprints. It was hardwired into the same towers as the rest of the stasis eggs, however, giving a solid clue as to what was inside.

Silently, Dean and Castiel exchanged a look. _That has to be it._

They fiddled with the holo-map a while longer, noting the large red zones that took up huge swathes of the front of the ship. They could see where MEG, as she had explained to them before, had routed the remaining oxygen supplies to the Nest. She was keeping the occupants of the stasis pods alive with huge filters siphoning the air down into tubes and keeping the lungs of the crew steadily filled while they slumbered. The rest of the ship was dicey. If Dean and Castiel wanted to go anywhere other than the bridge, elevators, or a brief slice of the residence deck, Dean realized, they’d be out of luck unless MEG moved some things around.

Luckily the officer’s room—or what they were assuming was the stasis area for the officers—was blue-white on the map, without any concerning red shading. It felt like the first bit of good news Dean had come across since he woke up.

With another weighty, hopeful look exchanged, Dean and Castiel headed for the elevator.

 

x

 

The elevator seemed to glide on for a very long time, taking them up through the Nest. The rows of people outside  looked almost endless—three million sleeping mothers, fathers, friends, lovers. Three million people that would all die if he and Castiel didn’t fix this.

The uneducated car mechanic and the slightly flakey, dope-smoking masseuse.

Great.

They rode mostly in silence, and Dean found his mind searching for something to say. Not that he felt like Castiel particularly wanted to talk to him—dude was prickly at best—but they were the only two damn people awake in the entire galaxy at that moment, and MEG _had_ said something about going insane. Dean didn’t think he was going insane yet, of course, but if he didn’t find someone who appreciated his jokes soon, then he might.

“So,” Dean ventured after clearing his throat, “got any, uh, hobbies?”

Castiel gave him a strange look, tilting his head to the side in bafflement. “Yes…?” he responded, entirely unsure.

Dean nodded. Right. He didn’t want to talk. Got it.

The elevator gave a soft jolt as it stopped moving upwards, hitting a point in its journey where it needed to take them sideways instead. They both swayed just a fraction, but didn’t mention it, back to staring at the white walls.

“Sorry,” Castiel said after another uncomfortable moment. “I’m not very good at, uh, this. The meeting people thing. Not sober, anyway.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “You’ve got to be high just for small talk?”

“No.” Castiel glared. “I’m not like that. I’m just not good with _people._ I don’t—I don’t get their references all the time, or their jokes, and they don’t get mine. And people talk in riddles far too much.”

“Not sure how smoking makes much difference to that,” Dean said with a smirk. “Sounds like it’d make it worse—”

“Oh, it probably does,” Castiel interjected with a shrug, “but it sure makes me care less.”

“So that’s why you flaked out of med school and ended up a masseuse? Because you’re an anxious mess who self-medicates instead of dealing with things?”

Castiel’s jaw dropped incredulously. “What is this, an interview?”

“Nah.” Dean grinned. “If it was an interview, I’d have to get you to pee in a cup, and we both know you’d fail that.”

At that, Castiel finally gave out a low chuckle, something akin to a smile pulling at his mouth. They were spared from further awkward conversation by the elevator gliding smoothly to a halt, and the doors silently sliding open. The pair managed to exit without crashing into each other, yelling, or pissing each other off, so all-in-all, their relationship was improving.

The Nest spread out before them, and Dean couldn’t help but wander up the rail that ran around the edge of the level they disembarked onto. He rested one hand on the barrier, the steel cool against his palm, and just took it in. It was oddly enchanting, the soft glow of thousands of stasis pods; warm eggs of light that surrounded towers of life-giving machinery. Each row was on a balcony just like the one he stood upon, giving each high-rise the look of a fully-lit skyscraper in the otherwise dark space. When he’d first regained consciousness after being ejected from his own egg, naked in a puddle of slime and very confused— _God, how was that only a few hours ago?—_ Dean had stopped to gaze out at the Nest in awe. The awe was still there, he supposed, but now it was buried in fear.

Three million people. Fuck.

Castiel stood only a few steps away, his pose a mirror of Dean’s with his hand on the rail, his thoughts likely similar. He looked a little lost as he gazed helplessly at the passengers they were meant to save, and for the first time, Dean felt sorry for Castiel rather than just himself.

_He didn’t ask for this anymore than I did. He’s no more qualified than I am. He’s the only person who will ever understand this terrifying feeling of being chosen for something you never wanted, on this scale._

As if he could sense Dean looking at him, Castiel turned. Dean gave him a small, sad smile, and he returned it, in sync for just a tiny moment. It was solemn, but it was enough. They had to stop arguing and focus on saving these people, they agreed, without a word or movement.

Nodding, Dean moved off down the row of stasis eggs, heading for the spot where the plain white door they’d come for could be seen. Castiel fell into step beside him, and they metaphorically rolled up their sleeves, ready to dig in.

Hopefully it wouldn’t be—

“Locked,” said Castiel dully.

“Shit,” said Dean.

“We can’t order M-E-G to open it,” Castiel mused, spelling out the A.I.’s name in a feeble attempt not to draw her attention. They knew she was everywhere, but at least until she was called upon, she tended not to bother them.

“Yeah,” Dean agreed. “Doubtful that would work, given that she can’t even talk about… Y’know, them.” He indicated the door of the officer’s room with his shoulder.

“So, we’re screwed,” Castiel said dully.

Dean frowned. That wasn’t the attitude to have at all, it was just a door. He nudged Castiel gently out of the way and crouched down in front of the simple steel door, which had been painted a shiny white just like everything else.

“Hmm,” he said under his breath.

“What?” Castiel asked, sounding defeated.

“This is a mortice lock.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means,” Dean said thoughtfully, straightening up, “that this lock isn’t connected to the ships mainframe. It’s an old-fashioned type of lock with a physical key. Someone had to physically lock this from the inside once the officers were in.”

Castiel frowned but looked curious despite himself. “Does that help us?”

“Maybe. We don’t have the key so it doesn’t really matter who did or where they locked it from. But…if we’re lucky…” Dean trailed his eyes back and forth across the deck, thinking.

_Oh…yes!_

Castiel merely raised an eyebrow as Dean dashed back to the elevator. There had been a vending machine just before they got in, he was certain…

Although the _Saranton_ had several huge cafeterias and various other spaces for eating, much of the ship functioned from vending machines to accommodate many thousands of different preferences and eating schedules. Dean was intimately familiar with the machines, having maintained them.

He jabbed the button next to the speaker.

“How may I serve you, sir?” the vending machines polite, robotic voice greeted him.

“Pepsi,” Dean ordered, already raising his hand to scan on the provided pad, to authorize his transaction.

“Very well, sir.”

A paper cup of brown soda, complete with lid and straw, slid smoothly out from the machine in a shielded deposit box.

“Uh, no…” Dean said, grimacing. “Got anything in plastic? A bottle?”

The machine was silent for a moment, then whirred almost disapprovingly before roughly dispensing a bottle of Dr. Pepper.

Dean wrinkled his nose. “Figures.”

“Have a nice day,” the machine told him dully as he jogged back up the corridor, hurrying back to Castiel.

“Got that pocket knife from the locker earlier?” Dean asked him without preamble.

Castiel, who had lowered himself down to sit on the floor in front of the door while he waited for Dean, dug in his pocket with mute confusion before passing the simple Swiss-army knife up to Dean.

“Thanks,” Dean muttered, popping off the lid of the drink. He took a gulp, more out of habit than anything, and cringed. “You want this?” he said, offering it to Castiel.

Still looking baffled, Castiel took the drink. “Sure. Love this stuff.”

“Figures,” Dean muttered to himself, watching as Castiel quickly downed the contents of the precious plastic bottle. 

Dean could feel Castiel’s eyes on him, watching curiously as he worked. He kneeled down before the door, flicking the last few droplets of soda out of the bottom of the plastic bottle. Easing open the Swiss-army knife, he began to cut.

“What are you doing?” Castiel asked after a moment.

With his tongue poked out, focusing on not slicing his fingers, it took Dean a second to answer. “Gonna open the door.”

Castiel was quiet, so when Dean finished his first careful cut all around the bottle, removing the neck of it, he looked up, to find his eyebrow raised skeptically.

“Engineering.” Dean grinned, cocky and teasing.

The eyebrow rose further.

“Alright, so maybe it’s a bit more misspent-youth than engineering. But who cares, if it gets the door open?” Dean defended himself with a huff.

Castiel gave a hum of agreement as Dean went back to cutting. He removed the bottom of the bottle, and peeled off the label, leaving him with a clear tube of plastic. He didn’t have any scissors to hand, so he stood the tube on end and carefully cut down into it, sliding it open along one side so that he had a wide, curling rectangle of plastic. Deciding that it wasn’t quite thick enough for his purposes, he folded it in half, using the blunt handle of the pocket knife to run over the fold, again and again, pushing down with all his weight until the plastic held where he needed it to. He trimmed the edges, neatening it up so that he wouldn’t slice himself too badly when he tried to use it. It was a smooth sided, firm but flexible rectangle by the time he was done.

“There we go,” he said, satisfied and hopeful.

“Great job, Dean,” Castiel said dryly. “You slaughtered a soda bottle.”

“Shut up and get out of my way,” Dean grumbled, jerking his thumb to indicate that Castiel should move from in front of the door. He obeyed, though not without a dirty look at Dean’s tone, which was probably fair.

Dean eyed the door, looking for the best spot, before resting his shoulder against it and pushing as firmly as he could. It was sturdy steel, and it only moved back on its hinges the tiniest fraction—not enough. Dean grit his teeth and pushed again, harder, bracing his feet against the floor. Holding his plastic square between his forefinger and thumb, Dean tried to ease it into the minute gap between the door frame and the edge of the door…but it wouldn’t quite fit. Dean braced himself again, about to start ramming the door with his shoulder, when the door shifted just the final fraction of a millimeter that he needed, and the card popped into the gap. Looking over his shoulder, Dean saw Castiel behind him on the other side of the door, pushing in unison.

“Thanks,” Dean said quietly, wiggling the card down toward the lock.

Castiel shrugged, watching Dean with thinly veiled fascination as he jimmied the old-fashioned manual lock.

The soda-bottle plastic finally in place right above the latch, Dean took a deep breath. It was a heavy, well-constructed door, there was really no guarantee that what he was doing would work, but it was the only plan he had. Using the side of his hand, Dean knocked the plastic lock-pick card that he’d made sharply, forcing it suddenly downwards.

_Click!_

The door popped open. It was too heavy to swing far, but the latch had been popped out of place and the way was clear, despite the actual mechanism still being locked.

Grinning triumphantly, Dean turned back to Castiel. Their eyes met for a moment— _blue, blue, blue, blue_ —and Castiel mirrored his expression.

“That was impressive, Dean.”

“Eh, misspent youth, like I said,” he deflected.

Castiel frowned. “Nonetheless, you created the tool yourself from what you had on hand… I think that’s impressive.”

Dean pushed open the door, shrugging awkwardly. “It’s not, really.”

“Would it kill you to take a compliment?” Castiel asked, that eyebrow roaming upwards once more as he stepped up behind Dean, entering a narrow white corridor beyond the door.

“Maybe,” Dean said. A small smile again, shared.

The corridor stretched out before them, not very long but with several small arches on each side, leading off to separate rooms. Squinting through the first archway, Dean noted curiously that the locked zone contained more than just stasis eggs—it was a self-contained officers’ area, much like the one up near the bridge. There was a computer archive room for studying for exams, there was a dormitory, an entertainment area, and a vending machine. Unlike the main floors of the vessel, this area didn’t seem to have been maintained in the slightest. Everything was dusty, the lights overhead buzzed and blinked, and the air smelled heavily of neglect.

Dean and Castiel exchanged a nervous look, heading down toward the larger room at the end of the corridor where the blueprints they’d seen on the holo-table had hinted that the stasis-eggs were to be found.

The space the hallway open into was made up of two circular areas, conjoined in the middle like a number eight.

“What the hell…?” Castiel whispered, his eyes widening as they stepped into the first section, closest to the corridor. His eyes were resting on the center of the room, where there were four chairs.

Back-to-back, the chairs formed a square, and if it hadn’t been for the other obvious evidence, it would have been easy to think that four people sat in the seats.

Had.

 _Had_ sat in the seats.

Because the four people—beings, entities—that sat in the chairs were clearly long expired, and clearly not human.

Black, burnt out eyes took up the faces of the four men. Their expressions were oddly peaceful, no pain, no torture; accepting of whatever had happened to them. Beyond the black, pieces of blown-out wiring and metal were visible beneath their skin. Smoke stains streaked their faces, sooting their hair. They were all dressed in officer’s uniforms, the white a stark contrast to the horrific sight of their faces.

One was pale skinned, slim and dark haired. _Captain Michael Shurley,_ his golden-stitched name tag read.

To his right, another man—person—thing—sat. Blond. More wiry of form than the first, but less muscled. _First Mate Lucifer Damien._

The next was dark skinned, tightly muscled, shorter. _Second Mate Raphael Angelis._

The last was the smallest, blond, his hair longer. _Third Mate Gabriel Odinson._

“Bio-bots,” Dean said, breathing the words out more than speaking them. “They… They weren’t real people.”

Somewhere to Dean’s left, Castiel gave a dull nod, but Dean couldn’t tear his eyes away from the remains of the men before them, all sat identically with their hands neatly on the arm rests of their chairs—with the exception of the small blond, who hand one hand clutched tightly in a fist.

“Where—Where are the rest of the officers?” Castiel rasped out eventually. “Were they all…”

As Castiel trailed off, Dean merely shook his head, clueless. He gave Castiel a little push, directing him on through to the rest of the chamber, the second circular area of the vaguely eight-shaped room, furthest from the door.

It was filled with stasis eggs, packed wall-to-wall, nearly fifty of them if Dean was to guess a number. All with officer insignias and names.

All empty.

 

x

 

They’d left the door open when they’d silently moved back to the elevator. Who cared? Secret-schmecret, the area was a bust. Clearly the officers were _supposed_ to be there. But they weren’t.

Either they had never made it to their stasis eggs and were now all dead in some swathe of the ship where breathing was impossible, or they’d somehow left the ship entirely, abandoning every passenger once they’d lulled them to sleep.

Chilling options, neither of which Dean and Castiel spoke of. They simply rode back to the dormitory in silence.

It wasn’t, by that point, even that Dean didn’t _want_ to talk to Castiel. It was more that, well, what do you say?

_“Looks like it’s just us. Here. Until the ship gets worse and we, and all the people we were meant to protect, suffocate in the void of space.”_

Maybe not.

Dean lay on his bunk, staring at the uncomfortably close ceiling, listening out for the tiny noises that reminded him that Castiel was below him. There weren’t many. Castiel was just lay there, too. Time was passing in a strange, confusing vortex where Dean could have sworn that he’d been eyeing the same smudge on the ceiling paint for an hour, but in fact only a minute had passed.

“Do you think there’s any chance that the ship is off course and the oxygen system is failing just because of like, a leaky pipe or something?” Castiel’s voice drifted up from below, falsely hopeful.

“Sure,” Dean said, his tone entirely flat. “I’ll get right on that. Maybe some duct tape will fix it. You can fix anything with that shit.”

“Or Gorilla Glue,” Castiel observed in turn, humorless.

“Sure. I’ll drip some WD-40 into the engine and I’m sure we’ll be right back on course.”

Silence built again until Dean let out a long sigh, and slithered his way to the edge of the bunk. He slid down the ladder, giving Castiel’s mattress a solid kick on the way.

“Come on, you,” Dean said, running his hands through his hair.

“Come on, what?” Castiel didn’t move an inch. “I have no idea how to save this ship, Dean, and neither do you!”

“Yup, we’re fucked,” agreed Dean. “So suit yourself, I guess. MEG?”

With a click and a buzz, the A.I.’s voice boomed overhead. “Hey, dudes.”

“ _Dudes_?” Dean questioned, before shaking his head, dismissing it. MEG was the least of their issues. “You know what, never mind. Is there a bar on this level? One not covered by a red zone? One you could route oxygen to?”

There was a thoughtful pause. “Yes, I can do that.”

“Will you?” Dean asked, checking.

“I suppose. Not like you’ve got much else to do, is it?” MEG’s voice dripped with disdain, and if he’d had the energy, Dean would probably have hated her right then.

Instead, he shrugged and made his way across to the lockers on the wall. “Exactly. So bring me bourbon, girl, because it’s about to be karaoke night.”

“Alright. Might as well have the officers bar, then. Up by the bridge.” MEG sounded entirely careless, and if it wasn’t impossible, Dean would have said she sounded as depressed as he felt.

Rattling around in the locker, Dean picked through the remnants of the belongings of whichever poor, sleeping sap had occupied the dorm before them. They looked like a right dull bastard, Dean decided, but there was a red plaid shirt that was better than his baggy white scrub top, at least.

“That’s your plan?” Castiel spoke up from the bottom bunk. Dean looked over his shoulder to see that he’d propped himself up on his elbows, eyeing Dean incredulously. “You’re giving up? Just going to drink until we die?”

Tugging the button-up over his shoulders, Dean grabbed the pair of black aviator sunglasses that had been hanging inside the locker door, popping them onto his face and grinning. If the end of the world—or his world at least—wasn’t the time to dress like a douchebag, then when was?

“For tonight, at least,” he said, stalking away toward the bridge, leaving Castiel to stew on the bottom bunk.

# 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all she wrote for this week, folks!
> 
> What do you think of Dean and Cas's discovery?
> 
> And just as importantly... do you think Cas is going to stay in the dorm, or is he going to end up getting drunk with Dean instead? ;)
> 
> Until next time! <3
> 
> \- Mal


	4. Tiny Shorts, Big Hangover

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello hello, lovely readers!
> 
> I bring you good news: I have finished posting bang fics for a little while. Which means... I'm tearing through these WIPs!
> 
>  **Ergo, you can now expect an update to this fic EVERY OTHER SUNDAY.** (Or sometimes more often. Y'all know I'm impatient.)
> 
> Thanks to [andimeantittosting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saylee/pseuds/andimeantittosting) for being a fantastic beta and person.
> 
> Here we go... a little plot for you, this time, setting us up for regular posting ahead.
> 
> \- Mal <3

The officers’ bar was less fancy than Dean expected. He’d bought into the idea that the officers were snobs, smart folks with a superiority complex that always looked down on the rest of the ship and everyone on it. He was honestly a tiny bit disappointed that the bar didn’t really bear that out. It looked almost exactly like the one he recalled down on J deck, where he’d spent evenings with his brother Sam and their friends on board while they journeyed out of the solar system, before entering stasis for their first hyperjump. There was a long bar along half of one side, and then a small stage at the end where people danced or sang. There were a handful of white plastic tables and an electronic jukebox, playing every top-forty offering from the last three hundred and fifty years, and that was about it.

The only difference that Dean could spot between the officers’ bar and the bar on J deck was that this one was, if anything, smaller.

Well, that and the one down on J deck would now be severely lacking in oxygen. That definitely gained the officers’ bar a few extra points in Dean’s book.

Once upon a time, back when the ship was fully functional, the bar would have been staffed by a service droid, and Dean would have had to exchange credits for alcohol. The benefit to having the place to himself, he realized, was that the powered-down bot had nothing to say when he simply hopped over the bar and helped himself. He was half way through his first bottle of cheap, standard ship beer, when he realized that if he was stealing it anyway, he might as well steal the good shit.

So back over the bar he leaped, laying claim to an actual bottle of Johnnie Walker whiskey from up on the top shelves, where the genuine Earth liquor was stocked. The label said it had been made in 2209, so it was at least ninety years old. That, he guessed, might be the real difference between the officers’ bar and the one he’d been permitted to frequent.

Forgoing a glass, Dean took a deep swig of the smooth, brown liquor straight from the bottle, gritting his teeth against the slight burn from his too-large gulp.

“Alright, Winchester,” he said to himself. “Time to get drunk like the world is ending.”

He briefly considered how exactly one was supposed to have fun by themselves in a bar—but he quickly decided that the answer was the exact same way he always did. A few glugs of whiskey later, he sauntered over to the electronic jukebox, queueing up music from his favorite Earth era—with no one around to complain about it, finally. He knew it was old, but he liked what he liked. Not his fault that modern music was trash.

As the Eagles welcomed him to _Hotel California_ , Dean pulled himself up onto the stage at the end of the room and poked at the wireless microphone until it crackled to life.

Bottle in hand, he worked his way through _Stairway to Heaven, Smoke on the Water,_ and _Layla_ while looking out at the empty room.

Fuck, he hated that the room was empty. Dean was a people person, however guarded and asshole-ish he could be at times. He should apologize to Cas for being such a prickly bastard, maybe, but it wasn’t likely. And anyway, it wasn’t like Castiel had been any better, Dean decided.

Even so.

All they had was each other, he reasoned. They should at least be friends. Though if he’d still think that about the grumpy medic when he was sober, well, that was another question. The guy may be _incredibly_ easy on the eyes, but he was as much of an ass as Dean was, it seemed.

Though how much of that was him, and how much was their situation, remained to be seen.

Dean was half way through a pretty damn fantastic rendition of _Free Bird_ when Castiel appeared.

The first thing that Dean noted was that he was wearing a really dumb coat—he must have been raiding the lockers too, Dean decided. And whoever had originally owned that garment fancied themselves either the type of uncle who wasn’t invited to Christmas, or a Constantine cosplayer.

Both of which, Dean was _pretty_ sure, Castiel was not.

Even so, Dean had to admit it looked pretty good on him. Fashionable, maybe not, but there was something about it. He had an officer’s suit and a blue tie beneath it, and Dean thought with some amusement that Castiel looked as if he could be dressing for a date, if only they weren’t the only two people awake on the whole ship.

Castiel nodded at Dean but didn’t approach the stage. Instead, he made his way over to the bar and walked around the edge of it, heading straight behind it. Apparently, he realized quicker than Dean had that he could drink whatever he wanted, as he plopped himself down into a barstool with several bottles in front of himself, none of which Dean cared to identify.

They ignored each other, for the most part.

After a couple more songs, Dean noticed that Castiel’s foot began to tap the side of his chair to the beat of Dean’s karaoke selections. They both drank heavily, sharing the room but alone.

In the end, Dean decided to be the one to step up… or step down, as the case may be. He was still up on the stage, after all. One of them had to be the one to approach, and it seemed like Castiel was a stubborn shit. So, Dean would be the bigger man, even if he was only an inch or so taller.

He finished his rousing rendition of AC/DC’s _You Shook Me All Night Long,_ watching Castiel’s foot jerk along with it against the stool the whole time, and then took a little bow to his non-existent audience.

“Thank you, thank you,” he announced. “I’ll be here all week.”

Castiel looked up at that and Dean noted that he was at least smiling, since he’d reached the bottom of his first bottle. He raised both hands overhead and clapped, letting out an enthusiastic, drunken wolf-whistle of appreciation.

Dean laughed, glad that it seemed his approach would be welcome. He dropped the microphone on the floor, far from the kind of sobriety that was involved with slotting it back into the little holder-thingy. He jumped down from the tiny stage— _woah there, let’s try and stay upright when landing_ —and stumbled back to where Castiel was sprawled against the bar on his stool, sliding into the seat next to him.

“That was so good, Dean!” Castiel announced rather more loudly than necessary. “You’re very good at that. With the words and… and things. For the songs.”

Fuzzy around the edges, Dean squinted at Castiel. “How much have you drunk?”

Castiel’s shrug made the dumb coat rustle. “I found these liquor bottles back there. 

“And?”

“And I drunk them.” 

“Drank,” Dean corrected mildly, fighting a sudden urge for peanuts. Did this bar have peanuts? 

“See!” said Castiel. “I said you were good with the words.”

“So, is this just what we’re gonna do now?” Dean asked quietly, his eyes scanning forlornly up and down the bar, searching for peanuts that would never come. “Drink until everyone is dead? Together? Here?”

“Yup.” Castiel popped the ‘P’. “Though you were here first, I can leave if you want.”

Dean snorted. “Yeah… of all the gin bars in all of the levels of the ship, you gotta walk into mine,” he quipped.

Castiel’s eyes were wide, sparkling and bright as he leaned over, grasping at Dean’s shoulder like he’d just had a revelation. “Dean! Dean—I understood that reference!” 

Alcohol might also be called liquid courage, but Dean thought that in this instance it might not be courage so much as relaxation. Whatever it was doing, it appeared to have loosened the stick in Castiel’s ass a bit. Of course, being drunk, the thought bypassed Dean’s brain and went straight to his lips.

“I’m gonna get you drunk more often. I like you drunk, it loosens the stick in your ass.” Immediately, Dean raised a hand to cover his mouth. _Oops._ Some things should just stay in his brain.

Castiel squinted harshly across at Dean, his eyes blue lasers. “I don’t _always_ have a stick in my ass,” he complained.

“Oh really?” said Dean. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Because you’ve had one pretty firmly lodged in there ever since we met, y’know.”

“Like you haven’t,” Cas scoffed, picking up the second bottle in front of him and waving it to accentuate his point. “You’ve done nothing but yell at me since you slammed into me in the Nest, not looking where you were going!”

“Well, I’m sorry,” Dean snarked, “but no, I wasn’t actually looking for a naked slime covered asshole right that minute. I was expecting a medic of some kind.”

Castiel smirked into his bottle as he brought it to his lips. “When _are_ you looking for a naked, slime covered asshole?”

“Oh, shut up,” Dean grumbled, flopping forward onto the bar and burying his head in his arms. “You know what I mean.”

There was a _clink_ from Dean’s right as Castiel poured something, and after a moment more something bumped against Dean’s arm. He looked back up to see Castiel smiling uncertainly, nudging a shot glass in his direction.

“Here,” he said, nodding to the small glass he’d poured for Dean, before picking up his own.

Dean grimaced. It looked like tequila—his eyes searched the bar for the bottle, and yup, confirmed. He didn’t do tequila, not since he was a lot younger. But still. Imminent slow death, and all that. “Thanks,” he mumbled, curling his fingers around the shot.

“I’m really don’t always have a stick up my butt,” Castiel said quietly, holding his glass up but not drinking it. “I’m not usually a slime covered asshole, either,” he added with a tiny smile, raising his eyes back to Dean with a little twinkle in them before turning solemn once more. “I was just scared, okay. Still am, so I guess that means I’ll still be all those things.”

Dean regarded the shot thoughtfully, before nodding and tipping it back. He coughed once and wrinkled his nose before lowering the glass to the bar top. “I guess that makes two of us,” he said, leaning over to nudge Castiel with his shoulder. “You know I don’t have a clue what I’m doing either, right? We’re in this together. We’re fucked, sure, but we’re not alone.”

Castiel’s endless blue eyes rested on Dean’s for a moment before he nodded. “Yeah. We’re in it together,” he agreed softly, his low voice rumbling around the words, giving them weight, even though he managed a tiny smile.

 _Fuck, blue. Blue, blue, blue_ was Dean’s only vaguely coherent thought. That one, at least, stayed inside his head—thank god. How awkward would that be? He had zero indication that Castiel was even remotely into dudes, so letting slip that he kept fixating on parts of Castiel's face (and, he'd admit, occasionally other parts) was not advisable. He seemed too much of a hippy to be a homophobe, but Dean had been surprised before. Anyway, as soon as he was sober again, Dean was sure he'd remember just how infuriating this dude was. But for now, at least...

Leaning across to the side, pressing his thigh into Castiel’s with a grin, Dean grabbed the tequila bottle from in front of Castiel and lined their shot glasses back up. He poured sloppily, splashing tequila across the bar, but who cared.

“So, Cas,” Dean said, wiggling his eyebrows as he nudged one of the shots toward Castiel. “Tell me about yourself.”

 

x

 

Pro of waking up in the top bunk: it was dark, the glow from the computer screen that dominated the other wall of the dormitory mostly illuminating the lower bunk and leaving Dean in his little claustrophobic—but dim—cave above. Con of waking up in the top bunk: he was in the top bunk and he had to get down somehow. Initially, Dean wasn’t quite sure what had woken him up. He hadn’t had a hangover this severe since he’d gotten into Uncle Bobby’s homemade gin stores as a fifteen-year-old, and Dean was usually an _accomplished_ sleeper-in. He had zero expectations of waking before lunch. But something, some kind of noise, had woken him.

It was a fast, rhythmic _slap, slap, slap,_ as if… Dean sat up in horror. Oh god, was someone _jogging?_

Ducking just fast enough to avoid smacking his forehead on the low ceiling, Dean rolled onto his side and peered downward, over the railing.

Castiel slow-jogged his way into the room, his attention moving straight to the computer screen. “Heart-rate, MEG?” he asked breathlessly, two fingers moving up to press into the side of his neck curiously.

“One hundred and sixty beats per minute,” she chirped back, far too cheerfully.

“Thank you, MEG. Log that please.”

“Yes, Castiel. Would you like to begin cool down now?”

“Yes please,” Castiel responded, heading across to one of the lockers that stretched along the wall.

He was wearing miniscule white gym shorts and a sleeveless tank top that left surprisingly little to the imagination, and in his groggy, hungover state Dean wasn’t sure if he was hoping that the clothes were so tiny because they had belonged to someone half Castiel’s size previously, or if he was hoping that Castiel had _chosen_ them to be that tight. The locker creaked awfully as Castiel opened it, and Dean winced at the sound. From within Castiel tugged out a foam mat, and then kicked the metal door shut with a resounding crash.

Dean let out a groan. “MEG? What time is it?”

“Oh-Six-Eighteen ship time, Dean.”

“Oh, what living hell is this?” Dean croaked in horror. He grabbed desperately at his pillow, possibly so that he could use it to smother himself. “Cas, what the fuck are you _doing?_ ”

Sounding far too breathless and far too sexy for anyone so inconsiderate and annoying, Castiel called up to the top bunk, “You know there’s an hour daily exercise requirement on board, Dean! MEG woke me up ages ago.”

“Well then,” Dean said as sarcastically as his whiskey-rough voice could manage, raising his head to peek over the edge of the mattress, “why don’t you go ahead and report me to a superior officer for violation of—oh wait.”

Dean didn’t need to see the eyeroll to know it was there. Which was convenient, because all he could see was the stretch of those ridiculously fucking _tiny_ shorts across the globes of Castiel’s ass as he twisted himself over the yoga mat.

“Oh,” Dean moaned, pulling the pillow back over his face. “You’re a monster. An absolute fucking monster. MEG—wake me up in an hour.”

By the time Dean raised his head from the pillow again, Castiel was gone. Thank god. Dean didn’t need a heart attack just yet, he wasn’t _that_ fucking old. It took a few attempts to get down the ladder to the floor, and if he tripped down the last step a little… well, what no one was around to see didn’t even happen.

 “MEG?” Dean croaked.

Silence.

“Hey, bitchy Engineering AI, where you at?”

Nothing.

Grumbling, Dean shuffled across the door to the lockers and began to rifle through. They were going to have to make some kind of plan to access their personal belongings down on the storage deck, Dean decided. The scraps left behind by the previous dorm inhabitants were ill-fitting and awful. But even so, Dean thanked his lucky stars that they were at least clean. He nabbed a pair of jeans that were a little loose around the ass—they’d fit Castiel better, he decided, rifling around for a shirt. _Stop thinking about Cas’s ass, Dean._ He found a ship-issue white t-shirt with the _Saranton_ logo on the front, not that different from his old technician’s uniform, and decided that would do.

Pulling it over his head, Dean padded barefoot out into the gleaming white corridor beyond the dormitory. A hundred yards or so up the hallway there was a vending machine. He slapped his palm down on the reader, yawning.

“Coffee, please,” he said.

“Of course, sir,” the machine said politely. “Cream or sugar?”

“Black tar.”

The bucket-like paper cup of coffee that shuddered its way out of the dispenser was barely coffee compared to what Dean had made on Earth, but it had done him just fine every day he’d been on the ship.

“One early morning special,” the machine chirped, more civil than Dean could ever be before his cup was empty.

“Thanks,” he managed to mutter, because there was no need to be rude, even to a barely-sentient vending machine.

He probably wouldn’t let anyone overhear him say it, because they’d think he was off his rocker, but Dean quite liked the lower-level A.I.s on the ship. Some of the ones that were more intelligent—true A.I., it could be argued, like MEG and Xenon—could be condescending or difficult to deal with, but in general Dean found that the everyday robots that ran the ship, from vending machines to bartending droids to janitors, had been programmed very pleasantly and gave him little trouble.

Well, for the most part. Gazing down into the dark sludge of caffeinated water that filled his paper cup, Dean was swept up in a memory.

_He’d been called to the vending machine next to the elevator that led to the bridge. It needed a good service, the ticket had said, because it was misbehaving and assaulting officers._

_Assaulting officers? This he had to see._

_Usually he didn’t like working near the officers. They ignored those below them, especially an engineering pleb like Dean, practically the lowest rank on the ship. After a quick inspection, Dean pulled his data-recorder from his pocket._

_“Dispenser 172: chicken soup nozzle clogged. Appears deliberate; consider misuse complaint.”_

_He dug around on the top of the cart of tools, pipe cleaners, and spare parts that he dragged around the ship with him on his daily shifts, unearthing a 14B pipe cleaner. He was dislodging a large lump of chicken when he heard voices further up the corridor._

_“It sprayed him right in the face! My god, I don’t think I’ve been that entertained since we left Earth, and I switched Luci’s WD40 out for hairspray the other day,” came a loud, jovial voice._

_“I don’t understand why you insist on messing around so, Gabriel. You know our protocols. The faster we get to the first hyperjump, the faster we’re done,” a second, much grumpier voice replied._

_“Oh, come on, Raph,” the first voice—Gabriel—retorted. “Have a little fun. I like it here—all these people, so full of hope, so full of fun. I really wish there was another way, I wish we could—”_

_“Gabriel,” his companion admonished. “You know your place. We aren’t here for fun, we’re here to—”_

_“I know, I know,” Gabriel interrupted. “Protocol, and all that. Excuse me for actually caring about these people.”_

_“We aren’t here to care, we’re here to complete a mission. So, stay on track, no more potentially dangerous stunts, and specifically no more blocking the soup nozzles before Michael uses the machine.”_

_“Oh, come on,” Gabriel grumbled. “You know I’d never hurt anyone, not my style. Wait until you see what I did to Xenon’s explicit language filter…”_

_Grinning to himself, Dean had continued cleaning his nozzle, deciding not to put in a misuse complaint after all._

Blinking down at his coffee, Dean’s brow creased. Gabriel, Michael… those had been the names of the biobots up in the Nest. The burnt-out housings that had once been people, if augmented people. Somehow, they suddenly seemed a lot more human than they had when he’d seen their black-eyed, destroyed housings.

Dean took a long draw of coffee, dawdling back to the dormitory. Castiel had appeared—apparently, he’d been showering off his morning exertions, if his poofy, fresh-washed hair was anything to go by. He’d at least changed back into the slacks and shirt he’d worn the night before, and the booty-shorts were nowhere to be seen. Though, if Dean closed his eyes, he could still see them pretty dang clearly.

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel greeted him, far too perky for someone who’d been through as much alcohol the night before as Dean knew he had.

“Hey, Cas,” Dean replied distractedly, sinking down into one of the two chairs at the dorm table. “What’s the plan for today?”

“Not sure,” Castiel said with a thoughtful frown. “I guess all we can do is try and ask MEG for the records of what happened when the oxygen started dipping, and stare at those like idiots for a while until we start drinking again.”

“Hmm, yeah,” Dean agreed, his thoughts still wandering, something niggling at the back of his mind. “Hey, MEG?” he tried again, wondering if the A.I. had reappeared.

“Oh, you woke up,” she responded idly from the speaker above the computer screen.

“No thanks to you,” Dean grumbled. “You were supposed to wake me after an hour.”

“I am not a talking alarm clock,” MEG complained sourly.

“You woke Cas up for PT!” Dean complained right back.

“Well, him I like.”

Dean sighed down into his hands. Castiel gave him a slightly apologetic shrug as he flopped down into the chair opposite but said nothing.

“Did you want something, Winchester?” MEG asked testily.

“Yeah, actually,” Dean began. Castiel cocked his head in interest, clearly also wondering what Dean was going to ask. “Can you access the personnel files of the crew? Psychological testing, personality profiles, that kinda thing?”

“Theoretically, yes. Depends on who it is. Who am I trying?”

Dean sucked in a thoughtful breath, noticing that Castiel was sitting up, looking even more curious.

“Alright, MEG. Gimme everything you’ve got on Third Mate Gabriel Odinson.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there we go!
> 
> I told some of you in the comments that Gabriel would be coming up again... and this is far from the last time ;)
> 
> As a little teaser going forward, I also want to let you know that we'll be seeing a lot more of that bar...and they'll be seeing a lot more of each other in it, heheh!
> 
> Let me know what you think MEG is going to find about Third Mate Gabriel Odinson. Do you think Dean is chasing pointless threads? Should he be focusing on duct-taping pipes? Let me know!
> 
> \- Mal <3
> 
> P.S. What if I told you that I will be serial posting a new fic, starting this Tuesday? What if I told you it's something a little new for me... a tropey, piney, UST-y, BDSM AU! I've had a lot of fun writing it, so if any of you are into fake husbands, Russian accents, and D/S dynamics, I'd love to see you there!


	5. MEG

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello hello, readers!
> 
> I'm back with the first of the regularly scheduled updates for this fic - that feels pretty good to say!
> 
> So how about we get this plot moving, so that we can force our reluctant-roomies to have to work together a little... that'd be a good start for them, don't you think? 
> 
> Thanks to my awesome beta [andimeantittosting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saylee/pseuds/andimeantittosting) for her time and patience. 
> 
> \- Mal <3

“Who’s Gabriel Odinson?” Castiel asked, before his widening eyes signaled his brain catching up. “You mean the biobot in the Nest? One of the burnt-out officers?”

Across the white plastic table in the dorm, Dean nodded. “That’s the one.”

Castiel tilted his head, frowning slightly. “How is knowing the psych profile of a dead bot going to help us? More to the point, do bots even have psychological responses like that? MEG,” Castiel asked, turning to look up at the huge computer screen that dominated the wall. It was blank but glowed softly blue nonetheless. “Do biobots—”

“Oh, I’m glad someone thought to ask the A.I. rather than running their mouth,” MEG interrupted, sounding surprisingly irritated given that she was talking to Castiel. “We’re not second-class citizens anymore, you know—”

Immediately, Castiel raised his hands in a defensive manner, his eyes wide. “Woah, okay. I didn’t mean to upset you, MEG. I voted  _ for _ the Turing proposition. I’m not one of those people.”

MEG made an annoyed  _ hrmph- _ ing noise. “Glad to hear it. First of all, knock it off with the biobot crap. Third Mate Odinson wasn’t a biological robot; that term hasn’t been used since the twenty-second century, plus in his case it’s simply not accurate. Gabriel was augmented.”

“Augmented,” Dean said, blinking in surprise. “Like, the experimental tech from before the war?”

“Yes,” MEG answered seriously. “Meaning that Gabriel Odinson was human. His life was extended, his brain improved, and his physicality upgraded—but he was human.”

Castiel looked confused, so Dean tried to explain.

“Before World War Three, there was a tech company in the U.S. who thought that humans could be turned  _ into _ A.I.s. There were only a few prototypes—that we know of—because the program was volunteer based. The person would give up their consciousness, or the majority of it, and the electricity in their brain would power the background processes of the A.I. that sustained them. Their bodies could be upgraded, they could receive tech implants and stuff like that much easier.”

Castiel was smiling at Dean oddly, but all he said was, “So instead of a robot made to look like a human, augmented are humans that wanted to be robots.”

MEG made another rude noise. “I suppose, in the very simplest of layman’s terms.”

“It was kind of a problematic program, to some people,” Dean continued. “It raised a lot of questions about what it meant to be a person. But it’s because of that program that we ended up with the Turing laws later on, recognizing A.I. as sentient and deserving of rights.”

“Very good, Dean,” MEG purred, in a tone that managed to be only the tiniest bit mocking. “The drop-out’s got the drop on you for this one, Cassie.”

Dean frowned. “Alright, you. I said I never went to college, not that I was a moron. It’s interesting stuff, so I read about it, okay?”

“Okay,” Castiel said placatingly, reaching out to pat Dean’s arm with a tiny half-smile. “Back on topic. Why do we care about the third mate?”

Letting out an embarrassed sigh, Dean gave a little shrug. “Honestly, I don’t know yet. There’s just something bothering me. I remembered him saying he didn’t want to hurt people, that he cared about this ship and the people on it. So why would he—and the other officers—willingly abandon us like that? Without help, drifting? Something doesn’t add up, but I can’t put my finger on what it is yet. Him and his buddy mentioned some kind of mission—it sounded ominous. Can’t help but wonder if it’s somehow related.”

MEG was, surprisingly, quiet.

Castiel nodded again, leaning back in his plastic seat with a perilous squeak and folding his arms across his chest. “Alright then. Why not? It’s as good an avenue as any other that we’ve got. Though I still think duct-taping all the pipes is a winner.”

“MEG,” Dean asked in amusement, “how many kilometers of piping are there, on this ship?”

“Ten thousand four hundred and sixty point seven kilometers,” MEG recited calmly. “Mostly concentrated in the Nest, cryochambers, and navigation deck.”

“And how many rolls of duct tape do we have in the storage bay?”

“By last inventory, there are six hun—”

“Alright, alright,” Castiel snapped. ‘We’re fucked, I get it.”

“Any luck on Odinson, MEG?” Dean asked, unable to help giving Castiel a fond grin—wait, when did he start feeling fond?  _ Just because he’s cute and has a fantastic ass in someone else’s gym shorts, he’s still a douche, _ he reminded himself firmly.

“Well…” she said, trailing off.

Dean and Castiel both sat up in unison.

“Well?” Dean asked.

“His personnel file, such as it is, is hidden from me. It’s stored on Xenon’s main drive, separate from the other personnel, for some reason. But the strange thing is… well, I did a search for other references to Gabriel Odinson, across the entirety of the ship drives—or at least what’s still functional that I have indexed. So medical and engineering, currently.”

“And?” Castiel asked.

“And I found three separate records of Third Mate Odinson being reset since we left Earth.”

“Reset?” Dean asked carefully. It was a simple word, but something sounded very wrong in MEG’s tone.

“His A.I. core was flipped back to factory settings, essentially. They treated him as if he’d developed a malfunction, but the engineering reports and medical reports attached show a healthy circulatory system, healthy wiring, excellent organ preservation, and virtually no disc fragmentation or lost clusters.”

Leaning forward on the table, Dean pressed his forehead into his fingers and massaged dully at his temples. He let his mind drift back to the Nest, where he’d first seen the four officers, their eyes burnt black in their seats. It looked, for all intents and purposes, like the four of them had spontaneously combusted… but was it voluntary? Was it done  _ to _ them, or did they do it to themselves? And MEG’s findings begged the question, was it something they were all on the same page about?

“Dean!” Castiel said suddenly, his body stiffening. He blinked across at Dean, grabbing hold of his forearm. “The Third Mate was the smallest guy, right? Up in the Nest?”

“The short blond dude, yeah,” Dean agreed, nodding. “The one closest to the door as we went in.”

“He was holding something.” Castiel suddenly pushed up off the table, grabbing Dean’s wrist and practically dragging him out of his seat. “We should go back to the Nest, Dean—all the others were sat in the same pose, remember? All creepy-looking and calm with their hands on the arms of the chairs—”

“Except Gabriel,” Dean interrupted, nodding his agreement as he stumbled to his feet. “His hand was in a fist. You’re right.”

“MEG?’ Castiel said. “Is there any security footage of what happened when the officers went into their little hidey-hole in the Nest?”

MEG made a thoughtful sound. “Yeah, I guess there—” Her voice cut off sharply, replaced by the harsh, flat tone they had heard before. “Classified.”

Dean and Castiel exchanged a silent look. Reaching across, Dean tugged Castiel toward him, pressing his lips practically against the skin of his ear as he whispered, “I don’t know about you, but that makes me think we’re on the right track.”

Pulling back, though not pulling away, Castiel’s huge blue eyes fixed on Dean’s. He nodded slowly. He still looked afraid, hell, that’s how they’d both looked since they woke up from stasis. But there was something steely in his eyes, down in the depths, that Dean hadn’t noticed before. That, he decided—that was what they needed. He squeezed Castiel’s shoulder, giving him a little wink.

“You in?” he whispered. “Putting off that next despair-drinking session until after we’ve taken a little trip?”

“It’s the only plan we’ve got. Where else am I going to go?” Castiel whispered in return.

“Lemme get my shoes,” Dean said, stepping back to grab the half-finished cup of coffee that rested on top of the table, “and chug down this baby.”

Castiel wrinkled his nose at the cup but didn’t say anything. Instead, he moved over to the locker he seemed to have claimed as his, pulling out the crumpled trench coat and tugging it on over his shirt and slacks. It was the ugliest coat that Dean had ever seen, but in deep space who gave a shit. He had preferred looking at the tiny running shorts, though.

Dean drained his coffee and shoved his feet into his boots before he gave Castiel a nod. Before they walked out of the door though, Castiel tugged on his sleeve and held up a finger.

“MEG,” Castiel said, loud and firm. “Privacy on.”

There was a beep, and then silence.

Dean turned to look at Castiel, waiting.

“How long do you think we have up there before MEG notices what we’re doing, that we’re in the officer area, and that voice comes back?” Castiel asked. “And more importantly, how long before that voice starts to get mad, and what happens when it does?”

Dean shrugged. “I have the answer to exactly zero of those questions, buddy. Can’t we just keep her, like, privacied the whole time?”

Castiel shook his head. “No. The privacy filter is for personal rooms only, I think. We can’t just turn her off in the main ship.”

“That sounds right, unfortunately,” Dean agreed. “So, there’s not much we can do. Just keep going until she notices and deal with it if she does. Most of the time she seems like she wants to help, like he wants us to work this out, but… I dunno. She does seem…” he trailed off, not sure how to phrase it.

“Distracted?” Castiel supplied.

“Ditzy,” Dean corrected. “But that too. Earlier, when I woke up, either she was deliberately ignoring me—which I’m pretty sure goes against her programming—or she was just… I dunno. Somewhere else. She wasn’t answering, anyway.”

Castiel looked thoughtful but ended up mirroring Dean’s shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t know a lot about A.I. That’s your area, Officer Winchester.”

Dean snorted at the name. “I ain’t no officer.”

“Well,” Castiel pointed out, moving back toward the door. “You are, technically, the highest ranked person awake—I was basically the dude who rolled the bandages and tried not to touch anything. Pretty sure that makes you Captain now, Captain.”

“Great, I’ll hop right on that Captain’s exam,” Dean quipped, rolling his eyes as he headed on out of the dormitory, the white plastic door  _ shush _ -ing automatically to the side to let him out. “Oh wait, it’s written in gibberish, and I never even went to school.”

“Oh come on, Dean, there has to be a way you can—”

“I don’t want to be in charge,” Dean interrupted loudly, unable to stop himself from sounding just the  _ slightest  _ bit like he was yelling.

Castiel shook his head and muttered something under his breath that might as well have been Esperanto for all Dean understood it. “Let’s just get going,” he said, affecting his usual irritated frown, and striding toward the elevator, dumb coat flapping.

x

Dean wasn’t necessarily someone prone to melancholy thoughts—or at least, he never thought of himself that way. He’d just climb back up and get on with life, no matter what it threw at him. But, at the end of the universe, in a drifting, slowly deteriorating ship, with a jackass and a worryingly careless A.I., he figured he could cut himself some slack.

The thought of dying, slowly choking as the ship’s oxygen systems failed, wasn’t actually the scary part for Dean. Oh, alright, dying would suck. But mostly, his mind (and that aching, tense, scared space behind his ribcage) was full of the fear of letting down the people he cared about. Dean had never been able to put himself first, and so the thought of his brother and friends never waking up, simply fading to nothing in their stasis eggs, was what tugged noisily at the back of his thoughts almost constantly. Even Castiel—he was prickly and fucking weird, but Dean didn’t want him to  _ die. _

“Sorry,” Castiel said, apropos of nothing, as they exited the elevator.

Dean blinked in astonishment as he turned to eye Castiel, wasting no time gazing out the mind-blowing scale of the Nest, this time. Instead they hurried straight onward to the unobtrusive door that led to the officer’s private area. “For?” he asked.

“Pushing about the exam. It’s not my business.”

“Too right it isn’t,” Dean agreed, though he gave Castiel a small smile. “I didn’t need to yell, though.”

“For what it’s worth, I think you’re smarter than you give yourself credit for, that’s all.”

Dean didn’t respond, letting a silent raised eyebrow of disbelief do the talking as he pushed against the heavy white door, which was still ajar from their last visit.

The sense of abandonment in the officers’ wing gave the whole area a creepy, mall-after-dark vibe that slowed both Dean and Castiel’s hurried steps. Without discussing it any further, they had both made their way here as quickly as they could, staying quiet as if they could somehow escape MEG’s notice—despite the fact that the A.I. could track their very heartbeats if she wanted. So far, they’d been getting by on her not seeming to care that much. Her evil twin, though… that was a disturbingly different matter.

The air of the two circular chambers seemed marginally less stale than when they’d come up here the day before, and Dean attributed it to him having left the door open. It made it feel at least slightly more pleasant and made the dust easier to ignore than it had been on their first trip.

Dean let Castiel walk ahead. Definitely for some kind of strategic reason, not so that he could assess the fit of the crumpled coat across his wide shoulders… though it wasn’t bad, it turned out. Dean was a red-blooded male, he had eyes. Maybe Castiel would be the kinky kind, and he could gag his annoying fucking mouth so he’d stop talking while Dean— _ Woah, okay, _ Dean pulled himself up short. _ Death and suffocation and scandal, back on track. Maybe I should walk in front… _

Dean power walked awkwardly past Castiel, earning him a strange look as they entered the round chamber at the back of the secluded wing, where the officers’ stasis eggs were. Everything was as they had left it; dust motes hanging in the air, four chairs, the four bots. Four men. Whatever they were.

“Alright,” Dean said quietly as he approached the four back-to-back seats where the commanding officers sat, black-eyed and silent. He made his way around to the shortest man; blond haired, pale skinned, muscled shoulders filling out his white uniform pleasantly. “Third Mate Gabriel Odinson,” Dean read from the golden-stitched name tag on his white breast pocket. “Let’s see what you’ve got here.”

Third Mate Odinson’s hand was rigid, and Dean couldn’t help but grimace as he pried open the stiff, deceased fingers. He was cold, solid, and immobile. But, just as they had thought, once Dean had managed to wrench open the augmented man’s clenched fist, there was something within. Cautiously, with just two fingers—he’d seen too many mummy movies where they didn’t move until they  _ grabbed _ you—Dean reached into the curve of Odinson’s palm and pulled it out.

“What is it?” Castiel whispered, hovering behind Dean’s left shoulder.

“A data chip,” Dean said, holding up the small, fingernail-sized microchip.

“Information, then,” Castiel said cautiously, holding out his hand. Dean dropped the chip carefully into Castiel’s palm and he turned it, frowning. “What was so important that he’d keep it isolated like this, away from the main ship drives, and then take it to his… well, I mean, to his grave, really?”

Dean set his mouth seriously and nodded back the way they’d come, toward the door, indicating that they should leave. “I don’t know, Cas, But I feel like we should find out.”

Castiel opened his trench coat, showing Dean where he tucked the chip carefully into an interior pocket. “I agree,” he said. “Let’s head back to the bridge and see if there’s a way we can access it ourselves.”

Nodding, Dean strode out of the officers’ area, holding the door open until Castiel passed. He closed it as best he could behind them, the lock that he’d popped open preventing it from shutting quite all the way. He regarded the white-painted metal door thoughtfully, and the pause beside him told him Castiel was doing the same.

“Seems different now,” Castiel said quietly.

Dean nodded. “Not a bot. A person. At least one of them.”

Castiel nodded slowly, one hand flat on the door. “Well…” he said, exhaling long and tired. “I hope wherever he is now is better than here.”

Grimly, Dean nodded and headed back to the elevator.

It didn’t take them long to get to the bridge, zipping between the floors in the floaty, eerily white elevator. Castiel stood close to Dean’s side, the sleeve of his trench coat brushing against Dean’s bare forearm; the dude had no sense of personal space. Dean didn’t mention it, though.

Up on the bridge, they both moved wordlessly toward the huge glass window that took up the entire curving wall on one half of the room. They gazed out into space, watching distant twinkles in an unfamiliar sky. The inky dark was endless, and it seemed to loom ominously with a cold, lifeless beauty that was as enrapturing as it was unsettling. The swathe of eternity in front of Dean had far fewer stars than he was used to seeing from Earth. Neither of them said anything or shared their thoughts, but Dean found that looking out into the black of the cosmos made him feel incredibly small, and incredibly alone. A fresh wave of gratitude hit that, no matter how irritating Castiel was, they had each other. He looked at Castiel from the corner of his eye and found blue eyes looking back. They exchanged a small smile, and Dean couldn’t help but wonder if they’d been thinking similar thoughts.

“So, mister engineer,” Castiel began, “how do we see what’s on this chip?”

Dean screwed up his lips in thought, turning from the window to look around the room and see what they had to work with. “In theory, we just need a chip reader. But with Xenon down, these navigation desks are pretty much useless lumps of wire and plastic. We could ask MEG if she can read it, but that kinda feels like a last resort with the whole Two-Face thing she’s got going on.”

Castiel gazed at Dean blankly. “Two-Face?”

“Never mind,” Dean grumbled. “There’s gotta be some other system around here, though, that we could patch the chip into, some way of accessing it without Xenon or MEG.”

With a helpless shrug, Castiel confessed, “I know how to order food from a vending machine, turn on privacy in my room so I can jack off in peace, and hit the ‘On’ button for most things. That is about it. Sorry.”

Dean carefully side-stepped the mental image that Castiel’s words instantly provided and cleared his throat. “Well. That’s, uh, not terribly helpful right now, but if we need some bandages rolled, please do step up.”

Castiel scowled.

The bridge was sizeable, but even so, Dean could see nothing at first glance which could help. He moved over to Captain Michael’s chair, though he couldn’t bring himself to sit in it. After seeing the burnt out face of the man who should have been sitting in it while they were up in the officers’ wing of the Nest, it felt a bit like dead man’s boots. Instead Dean leaned over, standing next to the chair with his palms on the desk surface. Experimentally, he skimmed a hand over the print reader on the desk.

There was a soft beep, but nothing more.

Dean sighed. “It recognizes someone trying to boot it, but there’s literally nothing for it to load with Xenon zero-responding. It’s junk. The whole fucking ship, it’s just floating junk.”

“So, how does MEG work?” Castiel asked thoughtfully, moving over to the holo-table they’d used to view the blueprints of the ship. The prints were still loaded, and as Castiel jumped up to perch on the edge of the table, it looked oddly like the front of the ship was poking into his spine. “The way I understand it, the background processes of the ship are running on the emergency drives, now. There’s no A.I. controlling them; we’re floating around on old code from the twenty-first century. The final backup.”

Dean nodded.

“So, if all of the A.I. fail safes  _ failed,  _ or Xenon voluntarily powered down, or whatever the hell happened, then how is MEG still here? Wouldn’t she be operated via Xenon, like every other A.I.?”

“Yes, actually,” came MEG’s dry voice from above. “She would.”

Dean and Castiel looked at each other, their eyes catching as they both froze.

“Hey MEG,” Castiel said casually.

“So, uh, how are you working then?” Dean asked, pressing the chip into his palm as if he could somehow hide it. He took a couple of steps toward Castiel, subtly sliding the chip onto the edge of the table. Wordlessly, Castiel took it, slipping it back into his coat pocket, safe.

For a moment there was silence. But, right when Dean thought that perhaps she’d gone again, MEG responded.

“I… I don’t know. Someone moved me to the backup drives before you were all put in stasis.”

“What?” Dean straightened up slowly.

MEG’s voice was uncertain. “I—I don’t know. I have no record of it. I only know where I am now.”

Dean and Castiel exchanged another look, a silent argument happening in the air about whether to risk asking MEG or not. Castiel seemed to win,  _ but we have no choice, Dean, _ glared wordlessly across from the table.

“MEG,” Castiel said quietly. “Is there a chip reader on board that is functional? For data chips?”

“Technically,” MEG said slowly. “I could read a data chip. But without a functional desk to plug it into, I could only read it in my hologramatic form—I’d have to hold it.”

Castiel shrugged at Dean, drooping back against the table.

“Hey, no,” Dean said to Castiel, shaking his head at the way he slumped before looking up to the ceiling where MEG’s voice emanated. “Is there a powerpack around that I could use for you, MEG?”

“Powerpacks must be registered with Xenon before—”

“Not what I asked,” Dean interrupted. “Is the hardware accessible?”

“There are powerpacks stored in the Captain’s storage, behind the desk you’re sitting at,” MEG admitted, sounding displeased. “Let me guess, you can get one working without the authorization code?”

Dean grinned wolfishly, spinning around and dropping down to his knees so that he could yank open the cabinets built into the wall behind the desk. “Like hotwiring a car,” he answered smugly.

MEG gave a dramatic sigh. “Of course,  _ that _ would be the type of engineering skill that you actually do have.”

“Shut up, MEG,” Castiel and Dean said in unison.

Castiel dropped to his knees next to Dean, pulling the next couple of cabinets open. “What am I looking for?” he asked. “There’s a ton of shit in here.”

“Tiny little oval metal thing,” Dean said, holding his thumb and forefinger a couple of inches apart. “Really light. Usually silver, but it might be white given this fucking ship.”

Castiel smirked and dove back into the cupboard, junk flying onto the floor as he and Dean dug through them in excitement. Dean was pretty sure that Captain Michael Shurley used the storage cupboards as his own personal dumping ground; nothing was organized, everything that was labeled was in the wrong place, and there were odd items like spoons and plates which looked like they might have already been used, way back when.

“So apparently the Captain was a slob,” Dean muttered under his breath, grimacing as he pulled out a balled-up sock. “A really gross fucking slob.”

Castiel made a strangled noise as he jerked his hand back from a shelf. “That was  _ sticky. _ ”

Dean grimaced in sympathy but kept going. If they could just find one of the little powerpacks that formed the visible body of a hologram, and MEG could connect to it, then he might be able to find out what happened to the  _ Saranton _ . Which was one step closer to fixing it, in his book. There was always the possibility that what Gabriel had been holding in his fist was in no way related, of course, and that was actually some kind of prank (which, in Dean’s tiny memory of him, he had seemed prone to). But, as they had nothing else to go on other than Castiel’s dumb duct tape idea, they might as well go for it.

“Aha! You were right,” Castiel said, pulling out of the cupboard next to Dean. “It was white.”

“Knew it,” Dean said, rolling his eyes a little. “Alright, let’s get this down to Engineering and see what I can do.”

x

“Can you please just  _ stop that?” _ Dean asked desperately, driven to distraction by the sound of Castiel’s heels beating idly against the cabinet front as he sat on the workbench next to Dean. “Would it kill you to use a chair like a normal person?”

With a sulky set to his shoulders, Castiel slithered down and settled himself on the stool. “Sorry. I’m just bored because I have no idea what you’re doing,” he admitted boldly.

Dean gave a little chuckle, picking up the tweezers he’d set out on the tabletop with some other electronics tools purloined from various storage cupboards around the engineering bay. It was a sizeable area, containing everything that—theoretically—should be needed to keep the  _ Saranton _ flying in tip-top condition. Predictably, everything was white and the rooms were lit by gently glowing strip lights down near floor level and in specific spots above the desks, where more light would be needed. The air smelled sterile and dry, and every tool gleamed. Clearly at least one of the maintenance droids had been left on when the ships’ crew went into stasis… the poor thing must be almost as bored as Castiel, Dean decided.

“It’s not that hard,” Dean responded to Castiel humbly. “I learned this kind of stuff from my Uncle Bobby back home.”

“Was your Uncle Bobby a thief?” Castiel asked, his head tilted curiously, only sounding the tiniest bit judgey.

Dean considered his answer for a moment. “Sometimes,” he said.

Castiel huffed out a laugh.

“He was a mechanic,” Dean explained, carefully rotating the powerpack to find the minute wire that he needed. “Damn good one, too. But he was injured in the war and as he got older he couldn’t do as much, so he taught me. He ‘bout raised me and my brother, so he made sure we knew how to get by in life, even if life didn’t always deal a fair hand to people like us.”

“You were raised by your uncle?” Castiel asked, his eyes lifting curiously away from the powerpack to Dean’s face.

“Yeah,” Dean said, keeping his eyes firmly on the wire. “Dad wasn’t around much. Mom died when I was four.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” Dean bit out defensively. “Sure you are. Growing up with a fancy family like yours.”

Castiel frowned deeply, harsh wrinkles forming across his brow, but he didn’t rise to the bait. Instead he stood up, pushing the stool back under the desk, and stepped away. “Let me know when you’re done, asshole,” he muttered, moving away.

Dean bit down on his lip. “Wait—come back,” he called after Castiel. “Sorry. I’m a dick.”

“Yes, yes you are,” Castiel agreed, rather more seriously than Dean found he liked.

“So, I’m almost done,” Dean said, deciding to change the subject. He straightened up, pushing a hand back through his hair so it stood up in wild spikes. “I don’t know how long it’ll work for—I’m not a—”

“Not a real engineer, yes, I know,” Castiel said, sounding bored again. “I disagree, at least a bit, but let’s get this show on the road.”

Dean made the executive decision not to say anything in return, and merely held the powerpack up in his palm instead. They were hoping—desperately hoping—that if they avoided certain triggers that they knew by then set-off MEG’s angry overriding friend, like the word “Officers” or any information about waking them, MEG might be able to stick around long enough to help. With a final twist of the tweezers in his other hand, he connected the last wire. Tossing the tool down onto the bench, he clipped shut the tiny clam-like powerpack, and called out to MEG.

“Hey MEG, you ready to try this on for size?”

“If I blow a fuse connecting to that thing, I’m ignoring your calls for a week, Winchester,” she grumbled.

“We’ll probably be dead in a week,” Dean muttered under his breath. He gave the powerpack a quick kiss for luck—another weird habit from Singer Auto—and threw the tiny white widget up in the air.

For a split second it looked like it was going to fall—but then it spun slightly, and hovered.

Dean held his breath, and a few steps across the room, where he’d walked to get away from Dean, he could see Castiel doing the same.

“I think—” came MEG’s voice, uncertain and a little tinny. “I think you did it, Winchester.”

The powerpack began to vibrate, a glow appearing around its middle that spread out quickly, forming a quivering, humanoid shape made of white light.

“Let me just—” MEG continued, like she was talking to herself.

The light twisted, the shape distorting here and there, but steadily growing more solid in an ineffable yet fascinating way. Within another minute, MEG stood before them.

She was short; a Caucasian woman with brown, wavy hair just past her shoulder blades and cute, round cheeks. A pair of denim jeans and a simple tank top edged with lace covered a fairly curvy, slim form. She’d be hot, Dean considered, if she was human. Instead she looked very slightly transparent, her entire form tinged blue, and occasionally the odd line of code zipped across her skin like a high-speed, glowing tattoo.

“Hello, boys,” she purred. “Whatd’ya think?” MEG held out her arms, giving a little turn on the spot, showing off her new body, as it were.

“Very nice, MEG,” Castiel said, smiling politely. “Looks like Dean did a good job,” he added pointedly.

As a hologram, it turned out, MEG was capable of rolling her eyes. “Alright. Thank you, Dean. Better?”

Dean grinned cockily, crossing his arms across his chest. “Told ya. Alright Cas—give it to her.”

MEG gave a low, filthy chuckle. “Oh, he sure could, but I’d need a higher-grade hologram for that.”

Castiel laughed, shaking his head as he opened his trench coat, digging around in the interior pocket that had become their default safe-spot for Gabriel’s data chip. “Here you go,” he said, holding out the fingernail-sized chip between his forefinger and thumb. “How does this work?”

“Just lay it on my palm,” she said, extending her arm, hand flat. “It won’t fall through.”

Castiel looked skeptical, his eyes flickering once to Dean, before, after receiving an encouraging nod, he reached forward to very gingerly place the chip down onto MEG’s outstretched palm.

MEG folded her fingers around it. A slight buzzing sound could be heard, like sparking electricity, and MEG tilted her head to the side, her eyes glowing white.

“Interesting,” she said.

“What’s interesting?” Dean asked testily.

“There’s… well, there’s very little on it,” MEG confessed, though her voice was strangely curious.

“It’s empty?” Castiel asked, his shoulders slumping just a little.

“No,” replied MEG. “I didn’t say that.”

“Well, what is there?” Dean said, taking a deep breath, and trying to be patient. “If you don’t mind sharing please, MEG?”

“Don’t think I don’t know when you’re trying to kiss my ass, Dean,” she pointed out, before her eyes glowed white once more. “All that’s on here is a file location on one of Xenon’s main drives.”

“A file location?” Dean echoed. “Like… leading us somewhere else? What is this, a fucking scavenger hunt?”

“Perhaps it is,” Castiel said, turning to Dean and shrugging. “You said he was a bit of a prankster. The other option, of course, is that the information he’s trying to hide is something he was really concerned would be found by the wrong people.”

“Shit lot of good it does us either way,” Dean pointed out, “with Xenon out of commission. We’ve got no way of getting to whatever Gabriel was protecting, or hiding, or trying to lead someone to.”

 “Well,” MEG spoke up, “there may be… one way.”

Immediately, both Dean and Castiel’s attention was back on her. She looked between them both thoughtfully, her glowing white eyes dimming a few lumens as she uncurled her palm, holding out the data chip toward Dean. He reached forward and took it. Her hologramatic skin felt slightly warm and oddly tingly under Dean’s fingertips, but then her hand withdrew and the strange sensation was gone.

“If you can hardwire me into Xenon, in this form,” she pointed out, “then I should be able to access the drive location.”

“Is there an easy way to do that?” Castiel asked, stepping closer to Dean and reaching out to grab ahold of his forearm, as if he was bracing himself for the answer.

Dean didn’t blame him, feeling strangely excited, finally, no matter how much of a long shot this was. If there was any chance at all that Gabriel’s information was about the “mission” that the officers had been on, or what happened to the ship, then… Dean’s excitement fizzled. The information, whatever it was, was in reach—but they needed a real fucking engineer. He knew  _ of _ the process involved, but he’d certainly never done it.

“Not easy,” Dean answered for MEG. “But possible, right MEG?”

The hologram nodded, her waves bobbing around her shoulders slightly unnaturally. “Yes. If we go to the bridge, and Dean can work out how to hardwire me into one of the navigation panels, I should be able to at least look through the network and find out if the data Third Mate Odinson is leading you to is in any way salvageable. The alternative, of course, is that Dean overloads me and wipes me entirely.”

“Can you do it?” Castiel’s huge blue eyes rested on Dean, his hand tightening fractionally on his forearm.

“I can try. I can do a little of this stuff, don’t get me wrong,” Dean said nervously, gesturing to the center of MEG’s torso where he’d thrown the buzzing powerpack. “But MEG’s no stolen car or rogue droid. Not really my main field. But… I can try.”

Squeezing his arm tighter, Castiel gave him a small smile. “I believe in you,” he said solemnly.

Dean swallowed, clueless as to why Castiel would have any faith in him at all, but grateful. “Alright,” he said. “Let’s get going, then.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There we go, that's it for this one!
> 
> What do you think of MEG, friends? Do you think its a good idea to connect MEG to Xenon's drives...? And what about Dean and Cas; reluctantly hating each other just a _little_ less... ;) 
> 
> Next week we are heading into some fast paced plotty action, but also a little something else you might enjoy... I won't say more, but I hope to see you there! :D
> 
> You can find me over on tumblr as MalMuses, if you so desire.
> 
> \- Mal <3


	6. Coo-Coo for Cocoa Puffs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean and Castiel continue following Gabriel's trail to learn more about what happened to the _Saranton_ , but not everything goes quite to plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, hello! 
> 
> A slight delay in the posting of this chapter, my apologies for that. I was on the windy end of a hurricane when this was supposed to go up, and unfortunately real life priorities took over! So I decided to keep to the Sunday schedule and give it to you this week instead. 
> 
> Thanks as always to my wonderful beta and friend [andimeantittosting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saylee/pseuds/andimeantittosting).
> 
> Now, back to Dean and Castiel, so they can track down Gabriel's message!
> 
> \- Mal

 

Side by side, Dean and Castiel headed back toward the bridge. MEG walked along next to them, which was weird enough by itself, given that Castiel had been Dean’s only living company since he awoke, but it was somehow made even stranger by the fact that her footfalls didn’t make a sound. Holograms were pretty advanced, but even with the more cutting-edge powerpacks, that kind of detail was difficult to achieve—MEG was still, technically, composed entirely of light and weighed nothing at all. Her hair didn’t fall quite right, either, the odd curl sometimes drifting through her shoulders and the movement of each spiral not quite smooth, the brown tresses not shifting exactly as they should with her bouncy gait. 

They entered the white, slightly-too-bright elevator and stood in silence, shoulder to shoulder, listening to the soft electronic hum of their travel up to the very top of the ship. Dean couldn’t help his eyes drifting across to Castiel, studying the shape of his strong, stubbled jaw as it was highlighted by the white wall to his side. Why’d he have to be such a grumpy dick? Dean lamented. Dean would have been all over that if the dude was less of an ass. And, y’know, gay. At all. Internally sighing, Dean dragged his attention back to the door—catching MEG smirking at him on the way.

Great.

Dean was relieved when the elevator slid smoothly to a halt. The last thing he wanted was MEG making some awful, humiliating comment about Dean thinking Castiel was easy on the eyes. Clearly, he was. But Dean didn’t need things to get super awkward between them when they were the only two real people here.

_ Better make sure you don’t say ‘real people’ out loud, _ Dean chastised himself,  _ or MEG’ll taze you with her electric eyeballs or some shit. _

Regarding MEG warily, Dean moved so that he could step out of the elevator first, as soon as the doors glided open.

Castiel moved right along with him, and they turned to the right to begin heading down the short corridor that led into the main bridge area. The faster they could get there and connect MEG to the Saranton’s archives, where the file address that Gabriel had left them seemed to point, the better. As they walked, Dean became aware of…something.

At the back of his neck, his hairs bristled oddly. There was a strange ache in his muscles, and he suddenly became aware of an acute headache that he couldn’t remember actually starting. He took in a deep breath, centering himself, and the air in his lungs felt like it had a crackle to it, a sense of potential, a…something.

Dean looked over at Castiel. He’d spent enough time gazing lustily at the man already to see a minute change in his expression; Castiel’s dark brows had pulled together slightly, making a ridge in the skin above his nose. His lips parted, and he took a breath, much as Dean had. 

Before Dean could question if Castiel was feeling alright—or consider if he himself really was—there was a sound ahead of them.

_ CRACK! _

It was a sharp, alarming noise. Like a rock hitting a car window, leaving a glassy web in its wake, splintering right out to meet the metal frame.

The noise threw Dean even more off kilter; Castiel didn’t seem to react, as if he hadn’t heard it. MEG just kept walking.

“Hey—” Dean began, frowning, his eyes drawn up ahead to the bridge, where the sound had certainly emanated from.

The cracking was followed up by a terrifying fracturing noise.

A tinkling sound—no, a splintering sound; tinkling was too gentle, too soft and pretty for the horror that churned in Dean’s stomach when he began to register what the noises from the bridge suggested was happening.

Dean reached out, grabbing at Castiel’s arm, as if there was any way that could somehow save them both.

The window. The huge, glass window, impenetrable, unbreakable, resilient; all those words made liars by the sound. The one thing that kept space out there and them in here when they were on the bridge was somehow catastrophically failing to do its job.

Castiel didn’t jump, didn’t react to Dean’s arm. His attention was entirely elsewhere, peering down at the floor in fact, his steps slowed to nothing.

They had to get—Dean needed to—the air, oh god, the air, they’d suffocate here if—they’d get sucked out of the ship and into—

“CAS! RUN!”

Dean pulled—no, dragged—Castiel back in the direction of the elevator. There was a chance, he hoped, that if he could get them down onto the next levels fast enough, he could protect them from the deadly breach.

Castiel, however, seemed to have different ideas. “DEAN!” he screamed, flattening himself against the wall, jerking Dean across the tiled floor so he slammed against the side of the corridor with him.

“What are you doing?!” Dean yelled. “We’ve got to get—”

With a surprising amount of strength and a terrified yell, Castiel launched himself to the side and pushed Dean to the floor. 

“What the f—”

CRACK!

Dean’s exclamation was cut short by the final, booming crack of the glass front of the bridge imploding. 

Grabbing hold of Castiel tightly, unable to do much else, Dean rolled. He pushed Castiel over until he had the man pinned beneath him, protecting him as best he could from whatever radiation, debris, and god-knows-what-else was about to come hurtling their way, and clung desperately to the small rail that ran along the ground at ankle level, where the dimly glowing corridor lights hung.

“Hold on, Cas!” Dean ground out, strands of Castiel’s hair pressed into his face as he squeezed his eyes desperately shut. Around them both, a sudden whooshing feeling, intense, powerful and tight like a hurricane in a jar, pulled all the air from the room and made Dean’s skin crackle and his clothing flap wildly. 

“Dean! What the—” Castiel wailed, before Dean’s weight pushed the words from his mouth and turned them into a scream.

Panicking, Dean tried to push down his terror, tried to focus. He’d completely lost track of MEG; had she shifted from her holo form? Had she abandoned him and Castiel to their fate?

Tightening his hand on the railing, Dean got his other arm under Castiel, holding the man close to his chest. In any other situation, the feel of Castiel’s tight muscles pressed up against him all along the length of his body would have been exhilarating, but right then it barely registered. Dean just needed to protect him, save them both, somehow drag Castiel up the corridor before they couldn’t breathe, before—

Why could he still breathe?

Before he could consider anything else, the edges of the world began to fuzz black. Dean shook his head once, twice, but it didn’t help; he was gone, pulled into darkness.

The corridor was silent.

 

x

 

“What the hell is wrong with you two?!” MEG’s voice yelled out from above.

Dean could only see her feet, her heeled boots shifting with the occasional blue line of code that zipped across their surface, too fast to read. He felt like he had the world’s worst hangover; worse, even, than the one Castiel had woken him up from that morning, with his booty shorts and grotesquely healthy attitude. Dean groaned, shoving up slowly on his arms.

He was sprawled on the white-tiled floor of the corridor to the bridge.

Pinning Castiel to the ground.

Castiel, who was looking up at him, wide-eyed and confused.

Their eyes locked, and for a moment neither moved. Dean was pressed into Castiel, pelvis to shoulder, their legs tangled on the tile. He had one arm clamped around him, under his armpit, and the other flat on the floor near the lighting rail. Castiel, for his part, had his hands fisted in the back of Dean’s shirt, as if he was clinging on for dear life, and he was embracing Dean’s ribcage with the same fear-induced grip that Dean had going on. They stared, green to blue, and slowly exhaled; they were both shaking, breath uneven.

“What just…” Castiel started, before trailing off.

“How are we…” Dean began.  _ Alive _ , he didn’t finish.

They gawped at each other, heaving breaths stabilizing, until MEG broke their shared gaze.

“I’m sure you’re enjoying indulging in UST down there on the floor, but—again—what the fuck are you doing?” she questioned. Dean looked up and saw her hands on her hips, her unnatural curls hanging forward as she looked down.

Suddenly awkward, Dean began untangling himself from Castiel. “Sorry, dude.” He reached down, offering him a hand up off the floor, wincing in sympathy as Castiel’s back cracked when he sat up and released his spine from the hardness of the unforgiving tile floor.

“It—It’s okay,” Castiel said, looking around in confusion. “Where did it go?” 

“Where did what go?” Dean asked, his bafflement only growing as he slowly spun on the spot, taking in the spic-and-span, wholly unholey and fully accounted-for corridor they stood in.

“Something hit us, flaming…the floor,” Castiel said weakly. “Surely you saw the floor breaking away, falling down into the ship…”

Dean raised an eyebrow as he came to a stop facing Castiel. “I dunno about that, I was too busy trying to save us from being sucked out into space.”

“Into space?” Castiel questioned. “What are you talking about?’

“What are you talking about?”

“What are either of you talking about!” MEG barked impatiently. “Walking along, perfectly normal for the vascularly inclined, and then suddenly you’re both shrieking, Dean is pinning you to the floor”—she jabbed a finger toward Castiel—“and you’re clinging onto him like a startled octopus! If you’ve both gone nuts, we are entirely fucked,” she said.

Dean and Castiel shared an uneasy look.

“I know it sounds crazy,” Castiel began slowly, “but I really did see—”

“No, man,” Dean raised a hand, nodding. “Me too. I saw what I saw. And I have a feeling you did too. Felt it, even. Smelled it. Heard it.”

“Nothing happened!” MEG said, throwing her hands up in the air. “Well this is just fantastic. Last two humans awake in a million light years, and you’re both coo-coo for cocoa puffs.” 

They both turned to look at her, frowning.

“Look,” Dean declared angrily, “maybe it’s your sensors that are on the fritz, lady, because we both saw something.”

“Yeah,” Castiel agreed, squinting angrily. “I may be frustrated, and scared, and desperate for a joint, but I am not crazy, MEG.”

She looked distinctly unimpressed. Raising an arm, she pointed toward the bridge. “Come on then—I’ll prove it to you.”

Dean looked over to Castiel again, and they shared an uncomfortable glance for a moment before following the hologram as she strutted her way up the hall, muttering beneath her breath.

The floor felt reassuringly solid, but Dean still found he had a slight shake in his kneecaps. A hand landed on his shoulder, and he looked across to see Castiel smiling uncertainly as he clasped Dean. 

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Castiel said soothingly. “I don’t know what that was, but it was something.”

Dean nodded, reaching up to cover Castiel’s fingers as they reassuringly curled over his shoulder, giving them a quick squeeze before they dropped. “Thanks. And same. That was too real to be in my head, even if we somehow saw different things.”

In agreement, they shakily walked up onto the bridge.

Dean couldn’t help but gaze up at the huge glass window. It gleamed, polished to perfection, untouched. Not a crack, not a chip. Exactly how it should be—the glass blend was many feet thick, all but impenetrable. Unless the ship itself split in two, that window wasn’t going anywhere. Dean swallowed harshly. He knew, even more from his own interest than from any kind of study, how harsh it was out there in the deceptively calm vastness of space. Distant stars were mere dots, and the dull glitter swirl of a distant galaxy or two could just be made out in the inky distance, but other than that…nothing. Not just nothing, but the total lack of anything, the empty void that was so difficult for human minds to fully comprehend. Slowly, Dean dragged his attention from it back to the interior of the bridge.

Castiel kept sending nervous glances toward the floor, and Dean knew they had both been shaken more than they were admitting by whatever the fuck had just happened.

MEG walked up to one of the Captain’s large screens. Gesturing Dean and Castiel over toward her, she lay her hand over the palm reader on the desk.

“I thought the computers didn’t work?” Castiel asked thoughtfully.

“They don’t,” Dean answered for her. “She’s just commandeering the screens to show us something—right, MEG?”

She nodded distractedly, the code bars that occasionally rippled across her slightly translucent form speeding up for just a moment before the screen came to life.

Dean and Castiel leaned in, one on each side of her.

The screen showed the bridge corridor, from the elevator end.

“Security cameras?” Dean asked.

“Remind me to give you a lollipop,” MEG observed dryly.

On the screen, the elevator doors parted. Dean and Castiel emerged, stepping out into the corridor. While it was too distant to make out the fine details of their expressions, Dean remembered the strange feeling that had overcome him when they’d entered the hallway. As the Dean and Castiel on screen moved further from the elevator, Dean could see them both slowing and starting to look around. 

The corridor was clear, calm, the soft lights at ground level gently pulsing as the ship drifted aimlessly through deep space.

On the screen, Castiel’s shoulders bunched and he looked down to the floor.

Dean floundered, panicked, dived. 

MEG had taken a few steps beyond before looking back, baffled.

The men on the screen rolled, Dean’s attempt at heroism looking pathetic and almost comedic as they sprawled over the tile, yelling at cross purposes.

Across MEG, in front of the screen, Dean and Castiel exchanged a look. 

_ It’s okay, _ the look silently said. _ I believe you. _

Once the figures they watched on the security footage began to climb back up, MEG withdrew her hand and the screen immediately flicked back to blank.

“See?” MEG said.

Dean and Cas exchanged that look again. MEG seemed irritated, but somehow not concerned. Which, their look said, could possibly be another thing they had to be concerned about.

“Yeah, MEG,” Dean said. “We see.”

“Alright then,” the A.I. responded. “Let’s get on with what we came her to do, hmm, boys?”

 

x

 

Finding a place to wire MEG into one of the navigation panels so that she could directly access the Captain’s drives was easy. Dean had no care for mess and even less care for authority, so swinging a large fire axe at the side of Captain Michael Shurley’s desk to expose the wiring within was no trouble. Castiel watched with an amusedly arched brow, perched on the next desk and snacking on licorice from the vending machine in the hallway. 

MEG stood to the side—initially she had hovered, but when one of Dean’s over-enthusiastic axe swings accidentally passed through her hologramatic arm, she looked so offended that she stormed off to the other side of the desk. Castiel had squinted disapprovingly at Dean for being careless, but he was sure he’d heard the guy huff out a tiny laugh when it had happened.

Castiel watched with surprisingly little judgement, and even MEG kept her snarky mouth shut as Dean split wires and tapped his way into the navigation network. He guessed it wouldn’t do to give him too much shit for his slightly unorthodox skills when they were currently the only thing that they had going for them. 

Dean’s uncle Bobby had passed on many things to Dean in the years he’d raised him and his brother Sam, but the most important one was simply how to survive. Dean would do what he had to and think his way around problems, because the money and status others used to solve them was simply never going to belong to a Winchester. So, stolen cars, rogue droids, and black-market mechanics it had been. 

His uncle Bobby would have been proud.

Well, as long as he didn’t know about the faked-a-degree-to-sneak-onto-the-ship part. Bobby was a criminal, but he was startlingly honest when it mattered. Apparently, that time at the Saranton application booth, it should have mattered.

Dean wiggled a hand at Castiel from his position on the floor. “Gimme the pliers with the 5B nose,” he muttered.

After a moment’s hesitation, Castiel passed down a heavy, red-handled plier set. 

Dean weighed it in his hand for a moment, squinting. He waved it back up in Castiel’s direction. “Does this look like a 5B to you?” The fact that they really all looked kinda the same, and that Dean wasn’t even one hundred percent certain himself, was neither here nor there.

Castiel took them back from him and made some rattling noises up above. A moment later, he handed the exact same pliers right back down, without a word.

_ Bitch _ , Dean thought with amusement. 

Shifting his weight onto his side, Dean wrapped the last split wire around the corresponding one in the panel on the floor, using the pliers to work them together and make the final connection. Shimmying out from under the desk, he grinned. “Alright, the inputs for the desk now bypass Xenon’s outer frame and connect straight to the network drive library. If MEG can power it, not get fried by the feedback, and manage to navigate her way to the address Gabriel gave us…we might find out what he was trying to tell us.”

“Might,” Castiel muttered under his breath. But, nonetheless, he gave Dean a small smile and a high-five as he slipped down from where he’d been sitting on the desk. “Good job, Dean. That was impressive.”

“It was nothin’.” Dean shrugged.

Castiel reached out, grabbing Dean’s shoulder, and suddenly Dean’s vision was overtaken by blue. 

“Stop it,” Castiel said, his voice low and commanding, verging on angry. “You did a good job.”

“Look, you—” Dean began, frowning.

“You are so infuriating!” Castiel interrupted, practically yelling.

“Me?” Dean said, pushing Castiel’s hand from his shoulder as he threw his hands in the air. “You!  _ You _ are infuriating, your mood changes so fast you give me whiplash, and you don’t know anything about me!”

“You think  _ my _ moods are erratic?” Castiel protested, his hands in fists.

They were toe-to-toe, breathing heavily, their unnecessary anger still filling the small space between them, when MEG spoke up, her voice more annoyingly sing-song than Dean would bet it had ever been programmed to be.

“Oh. My. God. I ship it so hard.”

Castiel’s brow creased in confusion, his head tilting as his lips parted.

Dean managed to jump in before he spoke. “Don’t you dare ask her what that means.”

With a grumbling huff, Castiel stood back and crossed his arms. “Are we doing this or not?”

Turning to MEG, Dean gave her a questioning smile and gestured to the desk. “Well? Still want to do it?”

She looked down at the jumble of wires under the desk and then back up to Dean. Something flashed across her eyes, beyond the swimming blue lines of code—could an A.I. feel fear?

“Sure,” she said confidently, nonetheless.

“You don’t have to, MEG,” Castiel interrupted softly. “It’s not an order. Make your own choice.”

Dean nodded his agreement. “Either we’re in this all together, or not at all,” he said. He looked over at Castiel apologetically, his anger dissipating quickly as reality hit yet again. “Right?”

Castiel’s look was still confrontational for the briefest moment, but then his shoulders unbunched and he let out a small sigh. “Right. Together.”

MEG moved around to the desk, walking somewhat disconcertingly through Captain Michael’s chair, and slowly extended her palm toward the input pad. Dean held his breath as she hesitated for just a moment. There were so many things that could go wrong—hopefully the pad had been upgraded enough to read a hologram, because there wasn’t much that Dean could do with the supplies they had if it hadn’t. Even if it could read a hologram, MEG had to be able to power the machine enough with her own charge that she could access the network. And then they had to hope that the breakers in the network library, far down in the bowels of the ship, were still functional enough that they wouldn’t allow the drives to funnel power back to her, and fry her for her efforts.

Lots of  _ if _ s. Dean was a pretty laid-back dude for the most part, but he didn’t like these  _ if _ s. 

Castiel came to stand next to Dean, their shoulders brushing in silent solidarity, and perhaps apology. Dean flicked his eyes across to Castiel, trying to make him out, but the other man’s gaze was fixed solidly on MEG’s hovering palm.

As MEG pressed her hand onto the reader, there was a visible blue spark.

The lines of code that usually zipped across her strangely translucent form began to move faster, flying across her skin and amassing in number as her eyes glowed brightly white.

“MEG?” Castiel asked, fearfully.

She didn’t answer, her head tilting slightly, but nothing more.

Castiel began to step forward, reaching out toward her, but Dean grabbed his arm quickly and pulled her back. “No! She’s probably fine, dude, but if the power backs up, it’ll electrocute you both.”

Her head tilted this way and that as if she was looking around, up, down, moving through rows or aisles that Dean and Castiel couldn’t perceive. It was disconcerting to watch. They both waited with bated breath, Dean’s hand still on Castiel’s arm.

Eventually, after a long couple of minutes, MEG’s hologramatic lips pulled into a smile. “Got him,” she breathed.

Dean tightened his hand on Castiel’s forearm. Castiel didn’t complain.

The screen in front of MEG smoothly slid from black to blue, then to white, before slipping back to black again—but this time, there was a face in the middle.

“I hope this thing’s turned on,” the blond officer they’d seen up in the Nest jested. His expression was jovial, his voice light, but his brow was furrowed and tense. “Hello, whoever is watching. God, I hope someone is watching. My name is Gabriel Odinson. I am the Third Mate of the mega-ship Saranton. If you are listening to this”—His voice wavered, Dean noted, but only for a moment—“then I am dead. And you are in trouble.”

Dean and Castiel exchanged a look, silent and tense, but went straight back to watching the screen.

“First of all,” Gabriel continued, his hands coming into view as he spread them, “I should apologize for sending you on a scavenger hunt. I thought it would be dangerous to leave too much information in one place. Michael, he—well, it’s hard to explain. I don’t know where you are now, or what state the ship is in. I don’t know if it’s repairable, or if it’s been too long. I mean, I tried. I did everything to convince—you know what,” he spread his hands again, suddenly pulling himself up short. “I’m messing this up. Getting ahead of myself.”

Castiel let out a tiny snort, and Dean couldn’t help a small smile. Even as tense as they were, there was something strangely likable about the man on screen, though his caution and concern were worrying at best.

“Myself, and three other augmented—Michael, Raphael, and Lucifer—were recruited to command the Saranton at the same time. I thought they were alright at first. Our mission was simply to get the ship safely out of the solar system, as you know, and then see to it that all of the crew made it into stasis. When transmissions indicated that the radiation on Earth had reached a safe level, we would be woken. Then we were to wake the crew, make the journey back, and reseed the planet. Three other ships were to make the same journey, we were told.

“I noticed that some of my colleagues were…not what I had expected them to be. Callous, in fact. Cold. They viewed themselves as better than the humans who we were entrusted with. Over time, I grew more and more suspicious of their motives.” On screen, Gabriel swallowed hard, but continued. “Eventually, I was let in on their plan. Michael and Raphael believed that even if we reseeded the planet, humans would just destroy it again. They said there were too many of you—too many of us. I don’t know how many times I told them a few microchips doesn’t make us more than human. They said that if every mega-ship returned, the Earth would fail. Again. They—they—” Gabriel’s voice was failing, and his eyes shining. “They thought it was their job to make sure that less humans returned than left, you see. Thought it was—was their duty.”

Something in Dean’s chest seized as Gabriel’s tears fell. He reached out blindly, unable to take his eyes from the screen, tangling his fingers with Castiel’s. They both squeezed tight as they continued to watch.

“I was—I was too afraid. I couldn’t stand up to them, couldn’t make them see. And I’m so sorry. So sorry for what they did, what I had to help them do. I tried—I tried to fix it, tried to—Michael found me, every time. Every time, he reset me, like some—like some kind of—” Gabriel moistened his lips, shaking his head as he had to stop for a moment.

“Oh god,” Castiel whispered, choking. 

Dean squeezed tighter.

“Once the crew had all been put in stasis, so there was no resistance,” Gabriel was saying, “they uploaded a virus to the ship. I don’t know how they did it; all I know is what I caught in snippets here and there. They called it Apocalypse. It’s a boot-sector virus with polymorphic code. Highly destructive and parasitic, it’s a cavity infector able to insinuate itself into unimportant parts of the host file without changing the file size, avoiding detection. Once loaded into the memory of the system—of Xenon—it wormed its way through and infected the entire network. Then, on a trigger date—the anniversary of our leaving Earth—the virus mutated into ‘warhead mode’. It replicated, attacking Xenon’s A.I. BIOS equivalent, effectively forcing the BIOS to flash a fake update that severely damaged the ship’s mainframe motherboard hardware.”

“Any of that make sense to you?” Castiel asked breathlessly.

“It’s a virus,” Dean said dumbly.

“Right,” said Castiel.

“I know my only chance is to try and save you all once Michael goes into stasis,” Gabriel’s tense voice continued. “My final communication will be loaded in my own memory files, stored on A.I. deck twelve, the safest place I could find. I suppose, if you’re watching this, then I failed. Hopefully, you can take what I tell you there and save yourselves. Save all of us.”

Gabriel’s hand moved forward, as if to turn off the camera. With one last, wan smile, he gave a little wave with his other hand. “Good luck.”

The screen quickly turned black once more.

Beside Dean and Castiel, MEG let out a keening gasp as her hand tried to disconnect from the palm-reader at the desk. She stumbled back, right through Michael’s chair, ending up standing oddly in the midst of the cabinets behind, where they’d found her powerpack. She was leaning straight forward, her arm stretched out with her palm still on Michael’s desk, as if she couldn’t let go. Her eyes were getting brighter and brighter, whiter and whiter, making Dean squint.

“MEG?” Dean asked, leaving Castiel’s side to approach her, hands up. “Are you okay?”

“Dean?” she said, the end of the distant-sounding word lilting up into a question. “I...”

As MEG trailed off, her eyes flaring, the blue text on her body swirling like a tornado, Dean dived forward. He reached out, accidentally passing through her outstretched arm with an odd tingle and flung himself toward the cable joining the Captain’s desk, and therefore MEG, to the archives of the  _ Saranton _ .

“Dean!” he heard Castiel yell out as he reached for the fire axe, the one he’d used to break the desk, which was still propped against the chair.

It sounded like even MEG tried to call his name, but her speech devolved into a mechanical, high-pitched whirring, and the word never came out.

Dean swung wildly but managed to hit the cable. He severed it, straight through. The lights for the entire bridge flickered, as with an audible crack of electricity and a spray of sparks, Dean flew back through the air, smacking into the second mate’s desk, over to their left.

His left arm, the one whose palm had been closest to the metal head of the axe, felt like it was on fire; a searing, electrical burn spreading up his forearm and filling the air with the smell of burning flesh. His feet felt similar, the pain so overwhelming that he barely registered the impact of his spine into the desk, by comparison.

Agony roaring through his sizzling, cooking muscles, Dean blacked out.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, folks! I'd apologize for the cliffhanger, but I think anyone who has read my fic before probably sensed one on the horizon ;)
> 
> What do you think of Gabriel's message...and what do you think the final transmission will contain?
> 
> Also, any theories on what happened to Dean and Cas in the corridor, there? ;)
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, all of you. You are greatly appreciated :)
> 
> You can find me on tumblr as MalMuses, if you are so inclined.
> 
> \- Mal <3


End file.
